Hit & Run Victim: "I Thank God That I'm Alive"
CORAL GABLES (CBSMiami) - Odiliana Gonzalez laid in her bed Thursday, grimacing, sometimes moaning as she remembered the hit and run driver who rammed her 11 days ago and left her critically injured on the side of a road in Coral Gables.
"It's been terrible, depressing," the 46 year-old said. "I've suffered a lot of pain."
Gonzalez was hit, police suspect, by a red truck as she jogged along Country Club Prado on October 14th. A resident's home security system captured an image of a beat up, red Ford 150 blowing through a stop sign just a block or so away moments after the accident happened. Investigators believe the pickup may be the hit and run vehicle.
Gonzalez is battered from head to toe. She suffered multiple fractures.
"My leg was - the tibia - broken in three places and they had to do surgery, three surgeries in one week," said Gonzalez, a veteran banker of more than 20 years.
She remembers only raising her arms against a careening, oncoming vehicle before everything went black.
"I was knocked unconscious," she said. "I just hope that this person would come forward and have a conscience and take responsibility for what he did, or she did,"
Traffic safety activists said Gonzalez's broken bones may bolster the argument against relatively easy penalties in Florida for leaving the scene of an accident.
"You never want to see a crime get rewarded," said Sally Matson of the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving. "But as the law reads now, you are actually rewarded for leaving the scene if you are impaired."
Matson says a report by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration estimated that 80 percent of drivers who leave the scene of an accident have been drinking. A impaired driver can keep going, sober up before being arrested, and face much lesser penalties than were they to be charged with DUI.
Odiliana Gonzalez is grateful that - drunk or sober - the driver of the hit and run truck that hit her did not kill her.
"My life could have been in jeopardy. I thank God that I'm alive and I'm still here. It could have been worse," she said. "But I'm here."
Gonzalez was struck at Country Club Pardo and South Greenway Drive in Coral Gables about six O'clock on the evening of October 14th.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS (8477).
