MIDDLETOWN — The police have cited the driver of a car that sideswiped another vehicle Monday evening for driving at night without headlights on. The West Main Road accident left a 5-year-old boy seriously injured.

Matthew Matley, who the police said is 23 or 24 years old, was driving a 1999 Jeep Cherokee southbound on West Main Road at about 8:45 p.m. when his vehicle struck a 2001 Pontiac driven by Harley J. Sousa, 28, of Bristol. Sousa was traveling northbound and trying to turn left into the Middletown Public Library parking lot. Matley’s Jeep struck her car and spun it 180 degrees, according to an accident report.

A five-year-old boy in a booster seat in the back seat of the Pontiac was bleeding from the nose and crying when the police arrived. He was taken to Newport Hospital and later transferred to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, in Providence, with serious head trauma. His condition could not be learned yesterday.

Matley, of 6 Admiralty Drive, Middletown, told the police he hadn’t had time to brake when the Pontiac cut in front of his Jeep. Witnesses told the police that the Jeep did not have its lights on before the crash and Sousa told the police that she hadn’t seen the Jeep when she turned across West Main Road.

Sousa, of 18 First St., in Bristol, and her passengers, Ashley Bryan — the mother of the 5-year old — and a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old were all treated at Newport Hospital and released. The police did not identify the children.

— MEAGHAN WIMS