Springfield, Ohio, residents are sounding the alarm on the increase in traffic accidents — some of them deadly — as a result of the flood of approximately 20,000 Haitian arrivals.
Springfield received national attention last year after an unlicensed Haitian immigrant hit a school bus on the first day of school in August 2023, causing the death of 11-year-old Aiden Clark. Twenty other students were hospitalized. Locals say that the tragic incident has left the community shaken and some of the children traumatized.
‘It’s not normal for little kids to have to go to funerals for their little kid friends.’
Blaze News’ Julio Rosas returned to Springfield and Tremont City this week to speak with locals about the new arrivals’ impact on the community.
David Cook, owner and operator of the Plastic Lumber Store in Springfield, Ohio, told Rosas that the most significant consequence has been the increase in traffic accidents. He mentioned a video that circulated online of a green Kia running a stop sign and smashing into the side of a police cruiser.
Cook stated that the Haitian nationals have not been properly assimilated into the community. Some have even managed to avoid the requirement to undergo driver’s education before obtaining a permit, he said.
Cook told Blaze News that he had family members on the school bus the day of the fatal crash.
“This is middle-town America, and we just don’t see this kind of accident ever,” Cook told Rosas. “Really, it’s the trauma of the whole thing. It’s kind of akin to PTSD.”
Cook explained that one child he knows told his mother that he did not want to get back on the school bus after the crash.
“The only way he could get back on the bus is if she followed him to school,” Cook said. He noted that some children have had nightmares since the incident.
Tremont City Mayor Tony Flood II told Rosas that the fatal bus crash impacted a few of the students he was coaching on the football team.
Flood said, “It’s PTSD.”
“It’s not normal for little kids to have to go to funerals for their little kid friends,” Flood added.
In another similar incident that occurred in December, Kathy Heaton, a Springfield grandmother, was struck and killed by a Haitian driver with an expired license while she was outside collecting her garbage cans. Prosecutors declined to charge the driver.
Cook told Rosas, “I’ve heard the comments about, ‘Oh, well, we brought all these Haitians in to try to help turn Springfield around.’ I don’t think it needed turned around.”
He explained that the Springfield area was previously a “strong manufacturing base” until the 1960s and 1970s.
“We started to lose that base, and we fell on some tough times. And I think, to a large degree, people who have lived here and lived through that still kind of think of Springfield as struggling,” Cook told Rosas.
“I mean, yeah, who doesn’t like cheap labor? But as far as its viability as a city and things that you can do here — I’ve traveled the country. I’ve been to 49 states. I’ve been to various countries,” he continued. “This is as good as it gets anywhere in America,” Cook declared. “I think our quality of life here is as good as anywhere.”
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