Cassandra and Brandon Newell recall Jan. 29, 2025, as the worst day of their lives.
The Newells, parents of three children who live in Fairway, received calls that day that two of their children, Connor and Annie, in fifth and second grades at St. Agnes Catholic School, respectively, at the time, were both hit by a car while walking home from school.
They were attempting to cross 53rd Street at Canterbury Road, the street their family lives on, when a vehicle struck them.
Connor broke an ankle and said he remembers being scared and worried about his younger sister. Annie was thrown into the bushes of a nearby yard and suffered abrasions and bruises.
Now, the Newells are fighting for a crosswalk or some other pedestrian safety measure at 53rd and Canterbury, near a sharp bend where 53rd turns into Mission Road just in front of St. Agnes Catholic Parish. Currently, there is nothing there to slow down traffic.
Annie, for her part, said she doesn’t understand why it is taking so long to do something at the site of the crash.
The Fairway City Council recently removed a proposed crosswalk and sidewalk at that intersection from its 2027 request from the County Assistance Road Systems, or CARS, program. The city is instead requesting funding for a separate project: bridge repairs on Mission Road.
The action means no sidewalk or crosswalk is coming to the spot anytime soon, though one councilmember has proposed adding some other safety solutions, such as painting the word “Slow” in the roadway.
In the meantime, the Newells have drummed up support for something more at 53rd and Canterbury among their neighbors and fellow families in the area. At Monday’s city council meeting, a parade of local residents came to the mic, calling for more to be done.
City leaders responded by saying the work toward more pedestrian safety at that intersection is just beginning.
“We just want safety and accessibility”
Police Chief JP Thurlo said at Monday’s city council meeting that the Newell children were trying to cross 53rd Street from St. Agnes on Jan. 29, 2025, when a driver heading westbound on 53rd stopped to let them cross.
Thurlo said a witness told police that the children ran across the street but did not look both ways before crossing. A driver heading eastbound struck the children, Thurlo said. That driver was not speeding.
Connor, who broke his ankle, got his first-ever X-rays as a result of the crash. The Newell children are no longer allowed to walk to school by themselves, even though St. Agnes is only a half block away from the family’s home.
It’s not just the Newells who want a sidewalk and crosswalk at 53rd and Canterbury. The Newells say they recently door-knocked around the neighborhood and earned the support of 117 Fairway residents.
“We just want safety and accessibility on that side of the street,” Cassandra said.
City opts against sidewalk and crosswalk
Burns and McDonnell, a Kansas City-based engineering firm, conducted a study of the area last year following the incident involving the Newell children.
The study found that there was no merit for adding a traffic signal or a pedestrian hybrid beacon, or HAWK, signal there.
The study only captured a handful of pedestrians at that intersection last spring, which Brandon Newell said was his family. On a recent school day, a Post reporter stood at the intersection during the time St. Agnes dismisses school and saw six people — including the three Newell children, two other children and an adult — cross 53rd at Canterbury.
The Burns and McDonnell study did find that a crosswalk with flashing lights and a landing spot, or a sidewalk on the south side of 53rd, would be warranted.
The city estimated that the work would cost nearly $575,000, which could be split with the county through the County Assistance Road System, or CARS, program, where the county helps municipalities pay for the cost of major road projects.
However, the council came to a consensus during a committee of the whole meeting in late February to remove the 53rd Street crosswalk from the city’s proposed CARS project list. Instead, the city is eyeing a separate project this year: repairs to a bridge on Mission Road over Suwanee Creek.
Mayor Melanie Hepperly, who lives next door to the Newell family, said during Monday’s council meeting that “this is a very difficult and emotional issue,” but it is one that the city takes “very, very seriously.”
Ward 1 Councilmembers Kelly-Ann Buszek and Lee Story said that a vote to remove the project from the CARS funding list does not mean the project is dead.
Story said he believes the city council made the right decision by removing the project from the CARS program but that he knows a solution is needed.
“Don’t let the fact that it’s not in the CARS program give you the impression that that’s the end of this initiative,” Story said.
Buszek suggested creating a pedestrian corridor that would install temporary solutions, such as lowering the speed limit on Mission Road, painting “Slow” in big, white letters in the roadway and even adding a bike lane on the south side of 53rd Street to provide “a margin of safety.”
Neighbors join Newells’ call for pedestrian safety
Fellow Fairway residents and even surrounding community members from Roeland Park and Westwood spoke up in favor of the Newells’ efforts during Monday’s city council meeting.
In this area where the three northeastern Johnson County cities converge, there are two schools — St. Agnes and Bishop Miege High School — a church, the Shawnee Indian Mission State Historic Site, and also the Fairway Shops nearby.
The speakers on Monday all shared similar stories about the need for pedestrian safety measures, like a crosswalk, along 53rd Street, as well as in the area around St. Agnes in general.
Rachel Gray, a teacher at St. Agnes, who recently moved to a home on Canterbury Road in Fairway near the Newells, said she sees more children regularly crossing 53rd at Canterbury than the three shown in the traffic study report.
Gray said that while there are more than just children who walk in that area, it is particularly concerning in the afternoons around school dismissal when cars are “zooming” around the corner where 53rd turns into Mission.
“It is scary, it’s a very busy corner,” Gray said.
Roeland Park Councilmember Jan Faidley also spoke in favor of pedestrian safety, signaling her city’s support for helping with costs for a crosswalk at 53rd and Canterbury. (The north side of 53rd, where St. Agnes is, is in Roeland Park, and the south side is in Fairway.)
A crosswalk at that intersection would require Fairway to build sidewalks on its side of the street, Faidley noted.
Jill Schramp is a Prairie Village resident who has two children at St. Agnes and one at Bishop Miege. Her husband, Joe Schramp, is the school’s interim president.
Schramp said she hopes Fairway can learn from the city of Leawood, which recently lowered the speed limit on Lee Boulevard from 35 to 30 miles per hour following the death of Duke Ommert, a 10-year-old boy who was hit by a car riding an e-scooter on that road last year.
“They paid the ultimate cost,” Schramp said.
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