Hit-And-Run Driver Pushes Grandmother's Car Onto Train Tracks
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FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - The driver responsible for causing a crash that pushed a grandmother's car over some railroad tracks narrowly missing an oncoming train, is still on the run.
It happened in the early hours of Sunday morning on Sycamore School Road just west of Crowley Road.
Seventy-eight-year old Patsy Lauderback was stopped near the railroad tracks when another driver waiting behind her in a black Toyota Scion noticed a red truck speeding toward them. In a split second, she went from waiting patiently behind the guard arms for a train to pass, to flying over the train tracks just missing an oncoming locomotive.
"I could see the light on that train and I just knew I was hit and killed. Wasn't anything else I could do," she said.
But Lauderback walked away without so much as a bruise.
"The Lord was with me or I wouldn't be alive right now," she said, still shaken by the hit-and-run driver who thrust her into danger without looking back.
"When you don't know whether you killed somebody or not, it's stupid, and I'm very bitter about it," she said.
"The first guy he hit thought he was driving 100 mph. He looked through the mirror and he saw him coming fast," described Lauderback.
The red pickup truck, either a 2011 to 2015 Ford F250 or F550, clipped the Scion as the sedan tried to move out of its path, then slammed right into her Kia Forte from behind.
"I'm still shook up, I still cry about it. How can anybody be that stupid?" asked Lauderback.
The hit-and-run driver then made a U-turn, jumped the median and took off.
Despite surviving the crash without injury, Lauderback is suffering.
"I have no way to go to work. I still work, and I had to miss work today," she said.
But Lauderback is determined not to let him get away away with it; worried for the safety of others on the road.
"I want him put away... that man. He needs to be gone. He don't need to be driving," she said. "He would kill somebody else."
Witnesses told police the hit-and-run driver had paper plates. The witnesses said there should be significant damage to the front end of the red truck. Anyone who recognizes the truck is urged to call Fort Worth police.
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