When she awoke, she was unable to walk or speak. Meanwhile, Vicky lay in a coma for three weeks with severe damage to her skull and one eye. Hardeman who had been seen in the vicinity around the time the accident would have taken place.Ĭrystal said she never believed Hardeman was the culprit. A grand jury declined to indict him after forensics showed that a suspicious spot of blood on his truck actually came from a fish, not a person.Īt some point, the police decided the accident was a civil matter and stopped investigating. No one saw what happened, but the police arrested and jailed a local fish peddler and minister named J.B. What looked like a tire track mark ran across her face. She found her lying unconscious next to the toy dishes she’d been playing with. Wrong suspect. By the time Crystal went outside to retrieve Vicky, it was too late. (It was filmed in 2001 when Vicky was about 25.) BOOK IN STORES AND ONLINE!Īt some point, Crystal’s boss told Vicky to go play outside in the parking lot, according to what both women said on the episode. One day in 1980, Crystal Lyons called her boss in the circulation department of the Big Spring Herald newspaper in western Texas to say she wouldn’t be coming into the office because her daughter Vicky’s babysitter was unavailable.īut he threatened her with termination, she said, so she went to work and took Vicky, age 4, with her. Terrible judgment contributed to the incident, but criminal intent or even ill will was nonexistent.
Still, the case in a way seems like a search for a villain where none exists. And her love for Vicky is beautiful, of course. “ Treading Not So Lightly,” the Forensic Files episode about the efforts of her mother, Crystal Lyons, to use amateur forensic science to find the driver’s identity, is exciting to watch.
The story of Vicky Lyons is heart-rending, about a little girl who survives being hit by a truck but spends the rest of her life beset by the effects of her injuries. (“Treading Not So Lightly,” Forensic Files)
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