The 37-year-old mother who accidentally ran over and killed an Ateneo de Manila gradeschool pupil on Tuesday afternoon was allegedly “texting” moments before the tragedy.

Witnesses said Ma. Theresa Torres appeared to have dropped her mobile phone and was picking it up when she seemed to have mistakenly stepped on the accelerator of her Hi Ace van just as the victim, Julian Carlo Miguel “Amiel” Alcantara, was passing in front of her.

“Torres asked her driver to get her own son and so she was seated on the driver side, buckled up. Eyewitnesses saw her texting with her cell phone. Then people saw her unbuckle her seat belt and she stooped down to get something on the floor of the van, presumably she dropped her cell phone and bent down to get it from the floor,” one witness said. “It was in that position that led her to mistakenly step on the gas accelerator rather than the brakes,” the witness added.

Other bystanders claimed Amiel slammed front of the van with his fists “in a vain attempt to call the attention of the driver of the van that was pinning him to the back of the CRV.” But the van, instead of stopping, continued on and ran over the child.

Case officer SPO2 Jun Cuaresma said the boy was extricated from beneath the vehicle near left rear wheel.

The accounts were among the many entries in widely read blogs and Internet writeups about the incident.

Other witnesses and even police investigators believed Torres mistook the van’s accelerator for the brake.

“Stooping down like that will make it easy for anyone to mistake the gas accelerator for the brakes. It looked like the hi-ace van has an automatic transmission. That way, your body gets disoriented as to what pedal is on the left and what is on the right,” said another witness.

Cuaresma confirmed that Torres’ van had automatic transmission even as she maintained that the van lost its brakes. “I surmised that she really mistakenly stepped on the accelerator, thinking it was the brake pedal,” Cuaresma told Standard Today.

Criminal charges were being readied against Torres, Cuaresma added.

Relatedly, prayers poured in for the family of the victim as complaints flooded the Ateneo offices from parents who demanded that “concrete steps be undertaken to prevent a repeat of the Alcantara incident.”

Alcantara was killed while his nanny was injured when they were hit by Torres’ van on campus. Tata Suarez, 65, was treated at the school infirmary for leg injuries while the fatality’s brother and sister both escaped with slight injuries.

Torres, who was hysterical, surrendered to the police; she is being detained pending the filing of charges of reckless imprudence resulting in homicide and physical injuries. Joel M. Sy Egco