A woman has been charged with assault with a weapon, following an incident in which witnesses said a driver deliberately struck a child with a car.
Paige Whalen was struck Tuesday afternoon shortly after she got off a school bus in St. Jude's, a small town in western Newfoundland.
"She [the driver] hit me in the back of the leg and rolled down the window and started cursing at me and saying, 'That will teach you a lesson,'" the 11-year-old said.
The girl was not seriously injured, but the experience has alarmed her family and neighbours.
Cpl. Robert Doyle, who works with the Deer Lake detachment of the RCMP, said interviews with witnesses indicated the driver deliberately tried to hit the child.
"Sometimes we seem to limit ourselves to thinking that assault with a weapon entails using a specific weapon – a hand-held weapon of that nature – [but] in this case it happened to be a motor vehicle," Doyle said.
The girl's mother, Madeline Whalen, said she is worried about the safety of children in her neighbourhood. She said the same woman tried but failed to hit her daughter last week.
"[Now] she did hit her. I mean who's to say she's not going to try again and do really serious damage to her or any other child that's here?" Whelan said.
The 60-year-old woman facing charges also lives in St. Jude's. She refused comment on the matter, and is due to appear in provincial court in Corner Brook on July 18.
The RCMP investigation is continuing.