Seven years ago, a Ford F-150 truck barreled into then-12-year-old Tamia Tolliver as she crossed a busy street walking to school, shattering her legs.
The truck driver apparently hadn’t seen Tolliver as she navigated an intersection with no crosswalk or guard outside Spring ISD’s Claughton Middle School.
“She looked like she was dead, the way she was,” said Tolliver’s grandfather, Marvin Jenkins, who found her crumpled in the intersection after rushing to the scene. “It knocked her shoes off.”
The crash marked the latest of several accidents involving students hit by cars, despite years of advocacy from concerned Spring residents. Local and county officials ultimately installed a stoplight and crosswalk at the site of Tolliver’s crash, helping students get to and from school each day.
Now, Spring residents are once again fighting for more pedestrian safety measures between Claughton Middle and neighboring Link Elementary School, where children sometimes trudge through narrow road shoulders, steep drainage ditches and the middle of the street to get to classes.
Their calls for a new mile-long sidewalk along Walters Road, which connects the two schools, have hit a roadblock at the county level, leaving them wondering if it will take another accident to spur action.
“We don’t want to see another child get hit or killed,” said Joseph Bowen, the father of a Link Elementary student and director of Municipal Utility District 150, which borders the proposed sidewalk. “That’s the worst thing that could happen, knowing that something could have been fixed.”
About 1,400 students combine to attend Claughton Middle and Link Elementary in Spring, a sprawling, suburban district north of Houston city limits. The Harris County government, led by five elected commissioners who represent 4.8 million people, is responsible for shepherding sidewalk projects in the area.
In 2021, following several years of lobbying by local residents, county engineers drew up plans for sidewalks on both sides of Walters Road, with the estimated high-level cost totaling $7.9 million. Harris County, Spring and local municipal utility district leaders agreed to split the costs.
That same year, however, Harris County commissioners voted to redraw the boundaries of representation, moving Spring’s territory from Cagle to Commissioner Rodney Ellis. Since then, the project hasn’t moved forward despite repeated requests from residents for updates.
Ellis’ office did not respond to questions for this article submitted by the Houston Landing on May 2.
In a statement, Spring administrators said students are prohibited from walking down Walters Road. But the Houston Landing on Wednesday observed two students walking in the middle of Walters Road, where the speed limit is 35 mph and the school traffic zone — which requires drivers to slow down near the start and end of classes — does not extend to the area.
In an interview Wednesday, Spring Board President Justine Durant said the district and county commissioners’ offices have spent the past seven years improving pedestrian safety in the area, most recently adding sidewalks to a heavily trafficked area with a high pedestrian fatality rate — Farm to Market 1960 Road and Ella Boulevard — about five miles north of Claughton Middle.
“This is an issue that used to make me lose sleep at night, but Commissioner Ellis has been wonderful in working with the district,” Durant said.
All walk, no action
Following the March 2018 crash outside Claughton Middle School, Tolliver underwent 13 surgeries, spent several months in the hospital and missed nearly a full year of school during her recovery. She still has metal splints in her legs, refuses to walk to places anymore and still hasn’t learned how to drive, her grandfather said.
Even though she has moved out of Spring, Tolliver’s mother, Keiunta Murray, still visits the site of her daughter’s crash when she travels to see family. Seeing children walk on the side of the road without a crosswalk and drivers ignore “No turn on red” signs at the intersection where her daughter nearly died makes her angry, she said.
“I cannot fathom if that happened to somebody else, because they may not make it the same way that my kid did,” Murray said. “Seeing those babies trying to cross the street to get over to school — I always have to stop and say a prayer for those kids. And sometimes, when I’m driving right there and I see groups of kids, I will stop traffic with my car just so they can cross the street.”
In the years following the crash, local residents rallied to improve safety along nearby Walters Road. The homeowner’s association of Camden Park, a neighborhood that borders Walters Road, and leaders of Municipal Utility District 150 took the lead in fighting to build a sidewalk along the street.
Initially, residents were encouraged by the county’s response. Records created in 2021 by the Harris County Engineering Department show plans to add 1.3 miles of sidewalks and safety improvements along Walters Road between the two schools. The project would take three to five years to complete, engineers estimated.
But the following year, after Ellis took over representation of the area, no major progress had been made. Robert Cadena, then the director of Municipal Utility District 150, contacted Ellis’ office in May 2022 to discuss where the project stood.
“They were claiming that the project was never approved, and that I was mistaken,” Cadena said. “I said, ‘Look, I know how these things work. If the Commissioner’s Office wants a project done, all they’ve got to do is say they want it done and it gets done.’”
When Bowen became the director of Municipal Utility District 150 in 2023, he and other longtime residents took up the charge. Spring resident Carylon McFarland, who has lived in Camden Park since the early 1990s, said she calls Ellis’ office two or three times per month to get an update on the planned sidewalk.
McFarland said Ellis’ office sent a representative to the Camden Park Homeowners Association to hear the residents’ concerns, but she was not impressed.
“They tell you the same thing repeatedly, over and over,” McFarland said. “That they’re having a meeting, that they’re gonna go and bring this up to the engineers, and see where it goes from there.”
Slow-walking solutions
Spring leaders have acknowledged pedestrian safety issues over the past decade, offering in 2017 to provide bus service to families living within one mile of campus. Under state law, school districts only get funding to transport students living more than two miles from campus, with a few exceptions.
But while the wait for a sidewalk continues, some parents have argued local leaders could do more to improve safety. For example, Spring administrators could add a crossing guard or local police could station more traffic officers near Link Elementary and Claughton Middle, they said.
Without any movement from the county, Spring administrators have relied on telling children to avoid Walters Road and instead walk alternate routes that could take longer for some students.
“Decisions regarding the placement of crossing guards and transportation route adjustments are based on a variety of factors, including traffic patterns, student population data, and input from the community,” district administrators said in a statement. “At this time, no formal concerns have been raised that would trigger a reassessment near Claughton. However, the district remains open to reviewing the area if new concerns are brought forward.”
For Spring parent Gaspar Guevara, who has one son attending Link Elementary and one son at Claughton Middle, the lack of movement has been frustrating. Guevara recalled attending Camden Park Homeowners Association meetings in 2017, fighting for a stoplight at the intersection where a driver would seriously injure Tolliver the following year.
“For a whole year, the (county) precinct was saying, ‘We’re gonna put it up, we’re gonna put it up,’” Guevara said.
Next school year, both of Guevara’s sons will attend Claughton Middle. On the days when they walk home to their mother’s house, the most direct route will be down Walters Road.
“It has me thinking things like, if it’s not gonna be this son, is it gonna be the next son?” Guevara said.
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