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Troopers identify 10-year-old boy killed in Union Co. head-on crash

UNION COUNTY, N.C. — The Highway Patrol is continuing to investigate a collision that killed a boy, a Charlotte man and injured other members of a family on their way to a school in Union County early Monday morning.

Troopers said Richard Lewis Moss, 43, of Charlotte was driving a pickup truck that crossed the center line on Old Pageland Monroe Highway and collided head-on with an SUV with a father and his three children inside. Moss died.

“I heard the crash, and just the sound,” said Jastm Williams, 18.

His mother had just dropped him off to catch his bus to Forest Hills High School, but instead he ran toward the SUV and saw an 8-year-old girl trying to get out.

“The window was just pulled back and so I just pulled back the rest of the way and got her out,” Williams said.

He then looked and saw her brother, still trapped in the backseat next to her.

“He was hanging by the seat belt and so I unbuckled the belt and had to jack him out,” Williams said the boy was conscious at first, but then passed out and would not respond when rescuers later tried to revive him.

The 10-year-old boy, Marco Solis-Sanchez, was airlifted to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte where doctors said he would need a liver transplant to survive. Officials said late Monday that the boy died.

Rescuers had to pull the child's father, Samuel Solis, 29, and 11-year-old sister, Roselyn Solis, out of the front seat. Troopers said they are expected to survive.

Another sibling, 8-year-old Joselyn Solis, will also be OK, troopers said.

A witness told Eyewitness News she had seen Moss’s truck driving erratically moments before the collision. The Highway Patrol said they are trying to determine why Moss crossed the center line. They found his cellphone and are examining it for clues.

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