Husband: Pregnant Wife Struck By Hit-And-Run Driver He Told To Slow Down
SONORA (CBS13) — Investigators say a pregnant mother was walking down the street when she was rammed by a driver who left the scene.
The family says the driver also pinned a 10-year-old girl against a parked car.
The woman, scheduled to deliver her third daughter in three weeks, is still in the hospital.
Leaving a family gathering after his grandmother's funeral, Steve Yapel was walking to his car with his 2-year-old daughter when he says he saw a coupe coming way too fast on a country road outside Sonora.
"He barreled through the stop sign, come hooking it down the road and I yelled at him to slow down," he said.
What happened next, happened fast. Yapel says the driver suddenly slammed on his brakes, leaving skid marks, threw it in reverse and floored it toward the father and daughter.
"He locked up his brakes literally and gunned it for us, what's the distance, 50 feet? He was full throttle coming at me," he said. "I was holding my kid in my arms. My wife, my pregnant wife, took the brunt of everything."
Yapel jumped out of the way, but he says his wife was hit and thrown 15 feet and knocked unconscious. Yapel says the driver backed into a parked car, pinning his 10-year-old daughter between the parked car and some bushes. She's scratched up and emotionally scarred.
"I merely yelled at him to slow down 'cause he barreled down the road; sees a family walking down the road, stops his vehicle and aims for us," he said.
Tuolumne County Sheriff's deputies say they found the suspect's car on Saturday at a home less than a mile away covered with a tarp. David Serpa, Jr., 40, is out on bail after his arrest for felony hit-and-run and assault with a deadly weapon.
"I'm shaking mad about it because it's frustrating," Yapel said.
He wants the suspect to feel the full weight of the law. He says his wife, days from delivering their third daughter, could have been killed.
"And I thank God that he didn't, because at that point it would be a whole different ballgame," he said.
His wife is being treated at a trauma center in Modesto with serious, but non-life-threatening injuries. The unborn child, Yapel says, is believed to be OK.
