A Beaver County woman whose 3-year-old was struck by a car and killed while sledding Wednesday afternoon said her son might be alive if paramedics had arrived sooner and police had done more about speeding motorists.

Jeanette Davis' son, Alexander, was sledding down the driveway when Robert K. Rhodes, 33, of Freedom, struck him as he slid out into the street in front of their house on Norwood Drive in Big Beaver around 4:30 p.m. He died later at Beaver Medical Center. Her 10-year-old son, who was on the sled with Alexander, was moderately injured.

State police announced yesterday that they do not believe Mr. Rhodes was speeding. And a dispatcher said paramedics were on the scene within a matter of minutes.

But Ms. Davis remembers things differently.

On that afternoon, Ms. Davis said, she had posted her 12-year-old daughter down the road to ensure that there were no cars coming when the boys sledded down the driveway. She said her daughter could see at least 200 yards in both directions.

After checking the road, her daughter gave the two boys the go-ahead, she said. But when they were about 10 feet down the driveway, the girl saw a car coming and frantically attempted to stop the driver, but it was too late.

"She was waving at him and trying to get him to stop," Ms. Davis said.

Ms. Davis said, given how far her daughter could see, the motorist must have been going too fast, though investigators say otherwise.

"I know he was going too fast ... he had to have been," she said. "But I'm not saying that I'm blaming him."

Still, Ms. Davis believes there should be consequences for Mr. Rhodes.

"I'm angry with the fact that they're not going to charge him with anything," she said. "He should have been cited at least."

She added that she has complained repeatedly at borough meetings about speeding motorists.

"I think that [the police] should have done what we have been begging them to do for the past three years, which is get people to slow down," she said.

When the two boys were hit, Mr. Rhodes stopped immediately, investigators said.

Ms. Davis, upon hearing about the accident, called 9-1-1 and went outside and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the young boy. She said she waited an excruciating 20 minutes for paramedics to arrive because they got lost and told her 12-year-old daughter, who was on the phone with them, that they could not find the house.

But Medic Rescue, the local emergency medical services agency, refutes that paramedics went the wrong way or got lost.

"Everybody knew where they were going. Nobody got lost," said Steve Bailey, the dispatch supervisor for Medic Rescue. Mr. Bailey arrived at the scene about 20 minutes after the boy had been hit and had listened in on all of the communication.

Mr. Bailey said the first ambulance was on the scene about five minutes after receiving the call. Two others arrived a couple of minutes later, and a fourth arrived about 15 minutes after that to transport the older boy to the hospital.

Though Ms. Davis said she believes her son's death might have been prevented, she calls the incident an unfortunate accident.

She said she will remember Alexander as a rambunctious boy who loved to wrestle with his brother and made friends easily. The day before the accident, she said, he had made a new friend and immediately grabbed the other boy's hand and insisted that they play.

"I'll remember all the funny faces he used to make and how he was so ready to love anybody he walked up to," she said.