FORT MITCHELL, Ala. (CBS News) — A 5-year-old Alabama boy was hit and killed by traffic after he was forced to exit a car at a church parking lot near a busy highway as punishment for “acting up,” Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor told CBS News.

Taylor said the child, Austin Birdseye, was in the car Saturday night with his mother’s boyfriend, who was driving on an “exceptionally dangerous road” when he forced the child out of the car.

That night, state troopers and the Russell County Sheriff’s Department responded to calls about a pedestrian being hit on Highway 165.

“Once we got there, we realized that it was a young child who had walked out into the road,” Taylor told CBS News.

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