Brianna Railing called her son, Jayson, in from the kitchen of their home Monday. The 8-year-old paced into the living room, a soft cast wrapped around his arm.

It had been a few hours since he was at Lawrence Memorial Hospital after lying in the middle of Massachusetts Street, dripping blood onto the pavement.

“He’s doing OK,” Railing said of Jayson. “But you’re always concerned when somebody hits your kid” with a car, she said.

She was even more concerned after learning from police that the driver, 16-year-old Lydia Caron, was using her cell phone when the accident occurred late Sunday night.

“You have to pay more attention at that intersection, especially when you’re on a cell phone,” Railing said. “You see a lot of people who run that light.”According to the police report, Caron told officers she was talking on her phone when, the next thing she knew, a child was in front of her car.

By then, she couldn’t stop.

Police cited Caron for a red light violation, failure to yield the right of way and inattentive driving – likely because she was on the phone.

In a phone interview Monday, Caron said she couldn’t say much for insurance reasons, but that she regrets the accident ever happened.

“I don’t have anything in my head, except that it shouldn’t have happened,” Caron said. “I hope that people take it as an example not to be preoccupied.”

Emotionally, Caron said she was doing OK, though police and witnesses of the accident said Sunday she was visibly shaken by the incident.

The accident occurred fewer than 24 hours before the Lawrence Traffic Safety Commission took up another round of talks contemplating adoption of what would be the most stringent motorist cell phone ban in the country.

According to police, Caron was on her phone when she ran through the red light at the South Park crosswalk just south of downtown and struck the boy.

Railing said her son, his aunt and another family memberwere walking through South Park about 9 p.m. Sunday when Jayson hit the button to change the crosswalk light from green to red.

Jayson, on roller skates at the time, rolled out into the street when his family saw Caron’s red Honda Civic approaching.

Jayson was treated and released from Lawrence Memorial Hospital, suffering bumps and bruises and, possibly, a fractured arm.

Railing said her son would be all right, but that she hoped, in the future, people would watch out for kids crossing at the South Park crosswalk.

And although she felt terrible for Caron – she’s so young, she said, she didn’t want her to become an example of why not to use a cell phone while driving – Railing said that a ban may be the right thing to do.

“Anything that is a distraction and puts the community at risk should be addressed,” she said.