Girl, 3, was behind wheel of truck that killed 2-year-old at gas station, Woodland police say

A 3-year-old girl climbed into the driver’s seat of a truck left running at a gas station as it fatally struck a toddler Saturday, the Woodland Police Department said Monday.

Woodland police were alerted just after 3:45 p.m. of a child hit by a truck at the 76 gas station on the corner of West and Court streets, police said on social media. The victim, identified by family as 2-year-old Ailahni Sanchez Martinez, was at her family’s taco stand when the truck began moving, according to police and a GoFundMe webpage set up her aunt, Mireya Sanabria.

Ailahni was taken by family members to a hospital, where she died from her injuries, police said.

The Police Department in its original post Saturday said a 3-year-old was in the vehicle. Investigators have since determined that the toddler “got behind (the) wheel” of the truck, according to Monday’s update on Facebook.

Sgt. Richard Towle, a spokesman with the Woodland Police Department, said the 3-year-old girl’s father had left his black Dodge truck parked at a gas pump and went inside the store. The 3-year-old child climbed out of a car seat and sat down in the driver’s seat, police said.

“The truck began moving forward and it collided with a two-year-old child who was near a taco stand on the edge of the lot,” police wrote in Monday’s social media update.

Sanabria wrote on the fundraising page that Ailahni was eating tacos when she was hit.

The father of the 3-year-old girl has cooperated with the investigation, police said. The investigation is still ongoing, and no arrests had been made as of Monday.

“We ask for the community’s patience while this occurs,” police wrote online. “The completed investigation will be forwarded to the District Attorney’s Office for review.”

Sanabria wrote that the family’s “little princess” was taken from them too soon.