*Editor’s Note: Stories like this always tug at my heart strings. May he rest in peace!

A man was killed and his 4-year-old daughter critically injured Monday night when he shielded her from a car that had jumped a curb and pinned both of them against a wrought iron fence on the South Side.

A Chicago man, 32-year-old Angelo Thomas, was charged with drunken driving Tuesday night in the crash.

The man, identified as Joseph Richardson, 39, by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, was walking with his daughter, Kaniyah to a McDonald’s for burgers, in the 9500 block of South LaSalle Street when they were struck, according to a police Major Accident Investigation Unit officer. The accident was not a hit-and-run, the officer said.

Fire Media Affairs spokesman Joe Roccasalva said the two were struck, then pinned against a wrought iron fence by the car.

Richardson grabbed his daughter just before the car slammed the two into a fence, police and family say.

“He held the baby up to keep the car from destroying the baby, but it totally destroyed him,” his father, the Rev. L.V. Richardson, said this afternoon. “It’s hurt me pretty bad, but the Lord’s going to keep me moving on.”
The incident happened about 6:30 p.m. Monday, according to police News Affairs Officer John Henry.

According to witnesses, “the car was spotted driving erratically,” police News Affairs Officer Marcel Bright said. “When the car hit the curb and ended up on the sidewalk, the man shielded the child from the impact of the car and that probably saved the child’s life.”

Richardson was pronounced dead at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn at 7:13 p.m. Monday, according to the medical examiner’s office.

The girl was initially taken to University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital in “very critical condition,” Roccasalva said.

Richardson was the father of three, two girls and a boy, all under the age of 10. He was an accomplished musician, playing the piano and organ in choirs at Cottage Grove Baptist Church and Greater Revelation MB Church where his father ministers.

[SOURCE]