Woman requires surgery after Bronzeville hit-and-run; suspect still at large
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Police late Thursday were still looking for the driver who hit a woman in Bronzeville and kept driving.
CBS 2's Asal Rezaei spoke with the victim, Elaine Austin, who was left with a broken ankle and tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. Austin is now home from the hospital and recovering.
Austin said she was trying to catch the bus and had just a few seconds to get across the crosswalk at 35th Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Drive. A Chicago Transit Authority bus driver and a number of pedestrians watched in horror as a car ran over her leg and took off.
Austin said she was flagging down the bus on Saturday morning, crossing at the light at 35th Street. That was when the car took off before the light ever turned green.
"The bus was at the light. He was at the light," Austin said. "So you know when they get ready to change to go - the light? That's when he hit me and ran over my foot."
Afterward, Austin said, the driver "just kept going - he didn't stop."
"Everybody else was stopping," Austin said. "Even a bus driver got out to make sure that I was okay."
Austin said she believes it was a dark-colored sport-utility vehicle that hit her.
"Then when I looked down and saw my foot," she said, "and I think that's when I got really scared - because it was just gushing with blood coming out."
The bus driver who got out to help her says his cameras captured what happened. Austin said the bus driver waited for police to arrive so he could give them access to his footage.
"I hope he gets caught so he can pay my medical bills, because that's the deepest thing that's going to worry me," Austin said.
Austin had to have surgery following the accident – and is facing up to $20,000 in bills already.
"Turn yourself in. You shouldn't have fled. You just left me there in the street. What if I was your mother, your sisters, or your anybody in your family? Just left them there?" Austin said. "You didn't care about them. You didn't even turn around and see what happened. You didn't even act. You didn't come back. You just kept going."
Austin said police are looking over CTA bus footage, and plan to talk to her on Friday about where they are in the investigation.
