“Do you want to die today?”
Those are the words a 15-year-old Lincoln High School student said he heard after a man allegedly yanked the teenager’s head inside a car and the driver hit the gas.
It all happened Tuesday, Oct. 22, around 11:45 a.m. right outside the school on the 3100 block of Ryan Avenue.
Shawn Leck, a freshman at Lincoln, and his brother Anthony Leck recounted the harrowing encounter in an interview with the Northeast Times.
Police are still trying to identify the driver and passenger connected with the incident. They left the scene in a gold Nissan sedan.
Earlier in the day, Shawn had been suspended for fighting. He got into another fistfight with 17-year-old Anthony after the boy’s mother and brother came to pick Shawn up. That’s apparently when the trouble started.
“Some guy pulled over and started saying stuff to us,” Shawn said. “So, I walked up to the car and asked him what he said.”
“He grabbed me by my shirt, and they started driving off like 50 miles per hour,” he added. “My brother started chasing the car. (The passenger) punched me, and I fell off the car, and I went sliding down the block.”
Shawn was taken to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital. He suffered mostly minor injuries — a sore elbow, fractured finger and bruised face — but his father, Mike Leck, said the situation could have turned out much worse.
“If he would have went under the tire, he could have died easily,” Mike said.
Anthony said he saw his brother spin at least 10 times as he ricocheted off the asphalt. The car dragged Shawn for about a block and a half, Anthony said.
“By the time I got to him, I started throwing up, and I think I passed out,” Anthony added. “I’m not really sure what happened after.”
The Leck family, who live in Mayfair, are hoping detectives can find the men who were in the car. Neither boy got a good look at the driver, but they described the passenger as a white man in his 30s or 40s with a longish strawberry blonde goatee.
Mike said he hasn’t heard much from investigators and worries the police aren’t taking the incident seriously.
Lt. Dennis Rosenbaum, of Northeast Detectives, said police are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the situation. He asked any witnesses to call the division at 215-686-3153/3154. ••
Jack Tomczuk can be reached at jtomczuk@newspapermediagroup.com.
