A FOUR-YEAR-OLD girl who was run over in Cowley, was in a serious condition in hospital last night.

The girl, who has not yet been named, was on her bike when she was in collision with the red Hyundai on Between Towns Road at 10.50am on Saturday.

The driver, understood to be a man in his 70s, was pulling out of the car park of Oxford Gentlemen’s Barbers.

Yesterday a father and his daughter told how they witnessed the accident and tried to help. Louise Mellis, 16, was working at the salon, owned by her dad Richard, and saw the accident happen.

Miss Mellis said the blonde-haired girl was cycling, with her parents behind her pushing another child in a buggy, when the collision occurred.

She said: “The tyre went over her, and she had cuts and bruises. Her parents were shouting her name. They picked her up, she was crying and I was crying.”

Then, according to Miss Mellis, the man began to drive off. The teenager, who attends Oxford Academy in Littlemore, said she followed the man’s car until he stopped at a nearby set of traffic lights.

She said: “I pulled open the door and said ‘you’ve just run over a little girl’.

“If I hadn’t tried to catch him I wouldn’t have been able to sleep.”

The girl was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital with serious injuries and the road was closed for two hours.

Mr Mellis, 45, from Forest Hill, who has run the barbers for just under a year, said: “I could see the girl was in shock and we called 999.”

Last night, Thames Valley Police inspector Paul Beaney said: “The injuries are not life-threatening but the girl is in a serious condition.

“She is stable and comfortable.”

The force could not say if anyone had been charged over the incident.