A quiet afternoon of kids playing and making videos ended in a hit-and-run that took a three-year-old’s life and left a Colorado family asking how something so ordinary could turn so tragic. The boy had been hanging out with older neighborhood children, filming social media clips near a roadside embankment, when a driver struck him and kept going. What might have been another forgettable scroll of short videos is now a case study in how cars, kids, and phones can collide in the worst possible way.
In the days since, the child’s mother, Shanice Silver, has been trying to retrace every step that led to her son lying in the road. Her questions are raw and specific, not abstract worries about “screen time,” and they cut straight into how older kids, unsupervised filming, and a busy street came together at the exact wrong moment.
The moments before impact and a mother’s questions
From what investigators and family have described, the three-year-old had been playing outside with two older boys who were filming videos on their phones, likely for apps like TikTok or Snapchat that have turned casual play into constant content. Silver told reporters that her son had been with those older kids near an embankment when the car hit him, and she has openly wondered whether her “baby boy” was somehow “put up there” by others rather than wandering into the danger zone on his own, a concern echoed in a detailed account of the embankment videos. For a toddler, the line between “playing along” and being placed somewhere risky is almost impossible to see, which is exactly what keeps gnawing at her.
Silver has described hearing a commotion outside, stepping out of her home, and finding her son lying in the road, a scene investigators later detailed in coverage that captured her saying she went into the street and saw him “right laying in the road,” an image that has now become the emotional center of the case and that appears in both written reports and a video interview. That split second, from the sound outside to the sight of her child on the asphalt, is the gap she keeps trying to fill with answers about where the older boys were standing, who was holding the phone, and how a driver could hit a child and keep going.
Older kids, social media, and a road that turned deadly
The presence of older children in this story is not a side detail; it is central to how the afternoon unfolded. Silver has said that her three-year-old was playing with two older boys who were filming social clips, a dynamic that put a toddler into a world shaped by older kids’ ideas of fun and risk, as described in coverage that notes she spoke about her three-year-old son and the boys around him. For teens and tweens, a roadside embankment might look like a dramatic backdrop or a place to stage a daring stunt for a few more views, while a three-year-old simply follows along, trusting that the big kids know what they are doing.
Investigators have said the children were near that embankment when the car came through, and Silver’s lingering suspicion that her son might have been “put up there” reflects a parent trying to reconcile the age gap between her child and the older kids who were running the show, a theme that also appears in references to the Mother speaking about her questions. It is not the same as blaming those children, who are themselves likely traumatized, but it does highlight how a culture of casual filming can nudge kids closer and closer to traffic, drop-offs, and other hazards that look dramatic on camera and brutal in real life.
A driver who kept going and a community left searching for accountability
As the family tries to understand the kids’ choices, police are focused on the driver who left the scene. Investigators have circulated images and descriptions of a vehicle they say was involved in the hit-and-run, appealing to the public for help identifying the car and the person behind the wheel, a push that has been featured in coverage of the vehicle sought after the collision. For neighbors, the idea that someone could strike a toddler and then drive away from a residential street has turned a familiar road into a source of anger and fear.
Local reporting has described how the case has drawn sustained attention, with journalists such as Spencer Kristensen chronicling both the investigation and the family’s grief as police continue to search for the driver. One detail that has surfaced in that coverage is the figure 33, referenced in connection with the case and preserved in the reporting as 33, a reminder of how even small numeric details get folded into the public record when a community is trying to piece together what happened. Alongside the main investigation, legal-focused outlets have amplified the story across their own platforms, including a subscription hub at Law & Crime and social channels on Facebook, Threads, Twitter, and even Snapchat, where the case is framed through the lens of “Cops” and the ongoing hunt for the person responsible.
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