LOWELL, Mass. -- A 60-year-old man is accused of running down a mother and her two children in a crosswalk in Lowell while driving under the influence on Sunday night, police said.

Nina Wilkin, 25, was pushing her children, Jonathan Dickey, 3, and Katelyn Wilkin, 2, in a stroller when they were hit at the intersection of Broadway and Fletcher streets just before 6 p.m. The woman was about three quarters of the way through a crosswalk when the car struck her and the stroller, police said.

"Fortunately for us, from an investigative standpoint, is we had a marked cruiser on the opposite side of the intersection stopped at the red light that witnessed it. The two officers saw the whole thing happen, so they were right on the scene," Lowell police Lt. Tim Crowley said.

Jonathan was thrown from the stroller and knocked unconscious at the scene. He was taken to Lowell General Hospital. The mother and her other child, a 2-year-old who was also knocked unconscious in the crash, were also being treated at Lowell General Hospital.

"He could have been dead. I am so happy. I'm so glad the Lord was watching. I think my father was up there watching over him and pushed him out of the way. He could have been killed," Jonathan's grandmother, Carol Dickey, said.

Police said the woman, who is from Lowell, was heading home from the grocery store when she was hit.

The driver of the car, Chamroeun Theam, of Lowell, has a previous drunken driving arrest in Wisconsin in 1994.

"He was out of it when they were asking him questions. And he was laughing. And he doesn’t speak English, so he didn’t understand what they were saying," one witness said.

Theam was arraigned Monday in Lowell District Court.

"He needs help. That's what we are trying to get for him is help," Theam's daughter-in-law, Sochann Chea, said.