The family of a 6-year-old Grand Prairie boy killed in a hit-and-run is focusing on honoring his life, not on the woman who surrendered to police on Tuesday.
Grand Prairie police said Tammy Lowe, 53, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Adams Middle School, surrendered to police on Tuesday morning in the death of John Paul Raidy.
She has been charged with failure to stop and render aid and manslaughter.
On Wednesday morning, a judge set Tammy Lowe's bond at $100,000 on a felony manslaughter charge and an additional $100,000 for a charge of accident causing injury/death.
Lowe denied a request to be interviewed at the jail.
Raidy's funeral was held Wednesday, nearly one week after he was killed by a hit-and-run driver.
"It's about John; it isn't about her," said family friend Sean Martin.
Hit-and-run suspect resigns teaching position
Lowe, 53, resigned her position as a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Adams Middle School before surrendering to police on Tuesday.
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According to a police affidavit, officers were sent to Lowe's home after an Adams school principal called police saying the school was worried about her welfare. Minutes later, she went to the Grand Prairie jail and asked to speak to an investigator.
In a simple handwritten note, Lowe resigned her position with the district Tuesday morning before surrendering to police at about 11:30 a.m. with her husband at her side.
She had been with the Grand Prairie Independent School District since the 1996-1997 school year.
School officials said Lowe seemed troubled at work in the past several days. Investigators said she looked distraught and pale and seemed remorseful when she surrendered to police.
Family members of Raidy said Tuesday night that they never expected a teacher to be behind the wheel of the car that hit their son.
"You become a teacher because you want to spend your life teaching children, and to think that a teacher was so heartless to do this, it's unbearable," said Christina Raidy, the boy's great-aunt.
But Raidy family members said they are sympathetic to what she is going through.
"We realize that it's devastating to her family, too," said John Raidy, the boy's great-uncle. "This is a tragedy for her family, as well as ours."
"It's a relief she turned herself in, but it doesn't bring John back," Christina Raidy said.
First-Grader Killed in Hit-and-Run
Raidy, a first-grader at Austin Elementary in Grand Prairie, was hit by a car at about 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24 as he crossed the street with his mother and sister.
Police said the driver ran a red light that investigators determined had been red for 14 seconds. Police said the collision was so powerful that Raidy landed on the hood of the car and was carried 100 yards before landing on the pavement.
Investigators said the vehicle that hit him stopped briefly and then drove off southbound on Carrier Parkway.
Raidy was taken by ambulance to Arlington Memorial Hospital, where he died.
On Saturday, a memorial grew near the crash scene after his mother, Lauren, made an emotional plea Friday to find the car's driver.
"He loved school, he loved all his friends and you took him from us," she said. "I pray they grow a conscience and turn themselves in for doing this to a 6-year-old boy."
Raidy would have turned 7 years old next month.
NBC 5's Kendra Lyn, Ken Kalthoff, Andres Gutierrez and Ellen Goldberg contributed to this report.
