A neighbor of a 12-year-old skateboarder who was struck and killed by a pickup truck Aug. 21 has been charged with a felony for allegedly leaving the crash scene.

Kasey Stewart Cline, 26, will be summoned to court for arraignment. He’s charged with hit-and-run in a fatal accident.

Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Paul Stern alleged it was Cline, a resident of the Lowell neighborhood in Everett, who ran over the boy as he was skateboarding at S. Third Avenue and Main Street about 9:30 p.m.

The day after the collision, Cline and a woman came with an attorney to Everett police after hearing news reports that Justin Freeman had been struck and killed by someone driving a white truck, Stern said in charging documents. Cline acknowledged to detectives that he “may have hit something,” but he wasn’t sure what he hit.

Justin’s mother, Carrie Butsch, said it’s a relief that charges have been filed, but she knows she may still have to go through a trial.

Police and prosecutors have kept her up to date on the investigation, she said.

“They were waiting for some more evidence or they would have filed charges sooner,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for months.”

She still lives in the neighborhood and has to drive by the accident site.

“It’s still hard,” Butsch said. “I just live a half-block away from where it happened. I’m reminded every time I go by there.”

Although Justin’s skateboarding companions described a white truck hitting the boy, Cline said he was driving a red Mazda pickup.

Police found a bent front license plate, fresh damage to the front bumper and white fabric on the grill guard mount and a tie rod on the Mazda. Washington State Patrol “forensic scientists have concluded that specific markings on the clothing and body of Justin match the 1989 Mazda pickup,” Stern said.

The scientists also concluded that the red Mazda is the truck that struck and killed Justin, Stern said.

Cline was the only person to drive the pickup on Aug. 21, Stern said. The woman who owns the truck said Cline arrived home at 7 or 7:30 p.m. Aug. 21, left shortly thereafter and returned again about 9:30 or 9:45 p.m.

“Shortly after he came in, she said, ‘We heard sirens,’” Stern said in court papers. “The defendant then mentioned something about how he might have hit something in the road.”

Justin would have been in seventh grade this year at Evergreen Middle School. It was twilight and he was riding on his skateboard on his belly – called “street luging” – on S. Third Avenue when he was run over, witnesses said.

Minutes before the collision, a woman called Everett police to report skateboarders running a red light at a busy intersection just blocks from where Justin was hit. Her description of the skateboarders matched Justin and his companions that night.

Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.