SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — A family says a run for snacks ended with their loved one hit by several cars and killed.
Now the victim’s family wants the road he died on made safer with lights and traffic signals.
Channel 2′s Tom Jones spoke with the family of Joshua Love one day after police were trying to identify him.
“It’s something that I never thought that I would be burying my baby,” Joshua’s mother, Quandolyn Mcfarland, said.
Joshua Love’s parents can’t believe he is gone.
“Our son. He was just 20 years old,” his father Nigel Love said from the living room of their home. “He was a baby.”
They say Love left home Sunday night to do a good deed for his younger siblings.
“I remember him saying I promise to get y’all some snacks,” his mother recalled.
In order to make that happen Joshua had to cross busy highway 138, also known as Jonesboro Road. The father of a 7-month-old girl made it across the highway and he got those snacks.
“Even the officer said he had a bag of snacks,” his father said.
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On the way back home, police say Joshua was in the middle of the road, in the yellow striped median, when a car hit him and kept going.
“It didn’t take nothing but a minute just to stop. Could have probably saved his life,” Joshua’s mother said, wondering what would have happened if the driver stopped.
Police say three other cars then hit Love. He died at the scene. Fidel Love says he drove by the crash on the way to work and had no idea his son was involved.
His wife was on the phone with him and told him to get out and see what was going on. He didn’t.
“I know it was the holy spirit telling me don’t get out,” he explained.
Joshua’s parents now want the first person who hit their son caught. “I just want you to come forward. Come forward. Just say what you know,” Nigel Love said.
The family says faith tells them to forgive the driver. But they say that doesn’t mean that person should go free. “We want justice. We forgive but we want justice,” the parents said.
And they want lights and traffic signals installed on this busy highway their son tried to cross at night with cars speeding by. “Ya’ll have to do something. This does call for concern,” Joshua’s mother said.
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