When a Street Kills a Child, We Put the Parents on Trial
The story out of Gastonia, North Carolina, is gutting. On May 27, 2025, 7-year-old Legend Jenkins was walking home from the grocery store with his older brother when he was struck and killed by the driver of an SUV on West Hudson Boulevard. The driver faced no charges.
Legend’s parents, Jessica and Sameule Jenkins, did.
Two days after the crash, the district attorney charged both with involuntary manslaughter, set bail at $1.5 million each, and took their remaining children into protective custody. Facing the prospect of months in jail and the loss of their children, the Jenkinses took felony plea deals.
They are now grieving parents and convicted felons.
This is what happens when we let cars define how we live. This is what happens when we normalize dangerous streets and criminalize the people who must navigate them.
The Public Realm Is Already Gone
The Jenkins family lives in an ordinary suburban apartment complex less than a ten-minute walk from a grocery store. That should mean their children could make the trip on foot without danger. But like so many American towns, Gastonia has been rebuilt for cars, not people. The “walk” to the store includes crossing a 45-mph, four-lane stroad with no midblock crosswalk, no traffic calming, and a median that hides oncoming traffic.
It’s not just unsafe; it’s hostile by design.
Parents in Gastonia don’t let their children roam because they know the odds: The United States kills pedestrians at three times the rate of other developed countries. In the decade leading up to 2022, pedestrian deaths rose 58%. The victims are increasingly children, older adults, and people in lower-income communities who have fewer alternatives to walking.
When a street’s design demands perfection from every person who steps onto it — and yet forgives even the most catastrophic driver mistakes — we don’t have a “public realm.” We have a minefield.
We’re Prosecuting People for Surviving in an Auto-Only Environment
The DA’s decision to prosecute the Jenkinses sends a chilling message: If you live in a dangerous environment and something happens to your child, you, not the driver, not the engineers, not the local government, will be held accountable.
Let’s be clear: The Jenkinses did what generations of parents have done. They let their kids walk to the store. They stayed on the phone with them the entire time. They were navigating reality as it is: a life where you can’t chauffeur every errand, where kids want a bit of independence, and where a ten-minute walk should just be a ten-minute walk.
But because our infrastructure makes normal childhood behavior life-threatening, this simple act is now treated as reckless endangerment.
And while we’re at it, think about the disparity in justice: A Gastonia man whose unsecured gun was used in the accidental shooting of a child got $50,000 bail. The Jenkinses got $1.5 million each. The driver who hit Legend? No charges at all.
The Real “Involuntary Manslaughter” Is the System Itself
Look at West Hudson Boulevard and you'll see the playbook of postwar suburban engineering:
High design speeds. Posted at 45 mph, which means many drivers are going 50+.
No shoulders or recovery space. No room to correct a mistake.
A “refuge” median that’s not a refuge. Trees block sight lines, creating blind spots for anyone crossing.
Long distances between legal crossings. The nearest signalized intersection is a five-minute detour, and even there, turning traffic is a threat.
These choices are not accidents. They are the inevitable product of a development pattern designed for throughput, not for people.
If a street is designed in such a way that the inevitable mistakes of children — and adults — lead to death, it is the design that is negligent.
At Strong Towns, we often talk about the “stroad,” a deadly hybrid of a street and a road. West Hudson Boulevard is the textbook example, engineered for high-speed car travel while also being the place where people live, work, shop, and walk.
This pattern is the result of decades of cheap, ever-expanding growth. We separated homes from destinations, widened roads to move cars faster, and stripped away the fine-grained street networks that made short, safe walking trips possible.
What Would a Safer Gastonia Look Like?
If we want children to live and parents to stop being prosecuted for letting them be children, we must change the environment, not just the laws.
That means:
Design streets for people, not just cars. Narrow lanes, lower speed limits, provide frequent crossing points, and maintain clear sight lines.
Build a system that responds to how people actually engage with their environment. Build midblock crosswalks where people already cross. Don’t make pedestrians walk an extra half-mile just to cross legally.
Cities need to be actively engaged in ending dangerous road design. These design choices are decisions we are making. We can make new ones, and that starts with city staff and officials.
Rebuild the fine-grained network. More intersections, smaller blocks, and connected streets make it easier to avoid high-speed corridors altogether.
Treat walking as a right, not a hazard. Every child in Gastonia should be able to walk to the store without risking their life or their parents’ freedom.
This Goes Beyond Gastonia
Legend Jenkins should be alive. His parents should not be felons. His siblings should not be growing up without him.
The deeper tragedy is that Gastonia is not unusual. Nearly every town in America has a West Hudson Boulevard. Nearly every community has stories of near misses, or of lives lost, where the official response is to lecture pedestrians, not redesign streets.
If we accept streets that kill and call it “normal,” we will keep producing stories like this. If we keep criminalizing parents for living in the system we’ve built, we will double the harm.
This is not about “letting kids roam” or “holding drivers accountable” in isolation. It is about the core question Strong Towns has been asking for years:
What kind of places are we building, and who or what are they designed for?
Until we can answer that, every parent will have to choose between protecting their children’s freedom and protecting their lives. And in too many places, the choice will be a coin toss.
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Chris Allen is the Director of Events and Partnerships at Strong Towns. With a long career in operations, sales, and management, Chris brings a passion for collaborating around big ideas and seeing them through. He brings his enthusiasm for the built environment and community advocacy to our partners and supporters through the work of the Events and Partnerships team. Chris is proud to work out the Strong Towns principles with our partners and donors—encouraging flourishing for all to positively impact our communities.
If you are interested in supporting or partnering with Strong Towns, please contact Chris Allen at chris@strongtowns.org.