Neighborhood in Shock After Auto Tragedy : Hit and run: Boy, 7, killed, his mother and five other children injured as car jumps curb, pinning them against a chain-link fence. Driver is chased and captured.

There was the screech of tires rounding the corner. Then, horrified neighbors saw a silver Thunderbird jump a curb and plow into a woman and six children walking along the sidewalk.

The witnesses said the woman was still clutching a small child to her chest when she was thrown onto the car’s front windshield and then to the ground in the 1400 block of East 65th Street in the Florence area, just before 4 p.m. Tuesday.

The car continued forward, trapping the others against the fence and dragging them along its chain-links.

And, as the dazed and bloody woman began screaming in Spanish, “Oh my God, my children! Someone please help my children!” neighbor Augustine Garcia recalled Wednesday, he stared unbelievingly as the driver opened his door, looked at the wreckage, took a swig from a beer in his right hand, and began running down the street--stopping only long enough to roll the bottle down a curb.

“I’ve never seen a tragedy like this,” Garcia, 21, who broke into his locked garage to get bolt cutters to tear away the fence, said of the accident that killed a 7-year-old boy and seriously injured his mother and five other children. “I’ve seen accidents. But a bunch of kids getting wrapped up in a fence? And this idiot, who had no heart, he still had the nerve to get out of the car and take a sip of his beer!”

Young Pedro Hernandez was pronounced dead just moments before his father arrived at the scene, California Highway Patrol Officer Rich Richards said.

His mother, Petra Hernandez, 33, was released from a hospital Wednesday after being treated for head, neck and back injuries.

“It happened very fast,” said Hernandez, fighting back tears Wednesday night. “The car hit us. I was thrown up on the hood. The children went under the car. . . . The next thing I knew, I was being taken to the hospital.”

The dead boy’s sister, Maribel, 4, was sent home Wednesday after being treated for injuries to her back and both legs, her mother said.

Still being treated at area hospitals for multiple injuries were: Alibene O’Campo, 5; Ernesto O’Campo, 4; Jesus O’Campo, 1 1/2, and Oscar Martinez, 4.

Richards said Sarah Martinez, 33, of Los Angeles, was treated for minor injuries and released. It was not clear Wednesday how she came to be injured.

Relatives said the O’Campo children are Petra Hernandez’s nephews and nieces. The relationship of the other two victims was not immediately known.

The driver of the car--who was tackled by two nearby basketball players and held, hog-tied with their belts, until sheriff’s deputies arrived--was being held Wednesday on suspicion of murder and felony drunk driving in the jail ward of County-USC Medical Center.

Richards said the suspect was arrested under the name Ricardo Martinez, 24. But after checking fingerprints, he said, authorities now believe he is Jorge Luis Martinez, 21, of Los Angeles.

On Wednesday, little evidence remained at the accident scene. There were patches of dirt darkened by blood, uprooted plants and orange markers where the car’s wheels had been. From a tree limb hung one of the belts used to tie the driver.

But the deadly crash that began with the screech of rubber would not soon be forgotten in the neighborhood of aging wood-frame and stucco homes. Upset and angry neighbors gathered there Wednesday, trying to make sense of what happened. Some said it was just a matter of time before a speeding car killed or injured someone on the once-quiet street.

“This is what happens here all the time,” J.P. Richard said, shaking his head at a white sedan as it peeled rubber on its second sweep past his 65th Street home. “Every morning and every afternoon they’re drag-racing up and down the street.”

Richard said he has lived across from the accident scene for 24 years, and traffic has never been as bad as it is now.

“It’s 10 times worse than it ever was. It’s just terrible. . . . And some of these fools wait until school lets out. I guess they don’t have anything else to do besides drag up and down the street.”

Some neighbors seemed resigned to the problem.

“Complain? Sure we do,” Richard said. “But what good does it do to complain? Nobody ever comes to do anything about it.”

Others, galvanized by their worst nightmare come true, were taking action.

Pamela Mejia, 30, was writing down license plate numbers of more than half a dozen cars that she saw speed down 65th Street or Parmelee Avenue on Wednesday afternoon.

“They (law enforcement officials) said call and report them and they’ll come out and investigate,” the mother of three said.

Mejia also tried to enlist the support of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and said the organization had promised to assist in the battle to clean up the street, as well as help the survivors of Tuesday’s incident.

Few on 65th Street knew Petra Hernandez, who lives several blocks away on 70th Street.

Authorities said Hernandez was caring for her own children and those of a sister, some of whom were on a winter break from the nearby Miramonte Elementary School. She was walking to meet another son after his weekly catechism class, according to Sister Beatrice of the Preservation Roman Catholic Church.

Normally, Hernandez’s husband picks up the children after catechism, said Sister Beatrice, who teaches the class at the church just a block away from the crash site.

She said it was only by luck that the class of children was not streaming into the path of that car Tuesday.

“I always let the children out just before 4 p.m. But Tuesday, I kept them late. I had treats for them,” the nun explained.

Sister Beatrice said she telephoned the Hernandez family, which she described as poor and very religious.

“At first, he didn’t break down,” the nun said of the dead boy’s father, also named Pedro. “But then he got upset and kept saying, ‘I don’t want my child to be burned, I don’t want my child to be burned.’

“He thought they would take the boy and cremate him because the family can’t afford a funeral.”

Times staff writer Nieson Himmel contributed to this story.