A 61-year-old pedestrian left for dead by a careless driver broke down in tears as she watched dashboard camera footage of the hit-and-run crash for the first time.
The woman, identified only as Elena, was crossing the intersection of Laureleaf Road and Steeles Avenue in Markham on the morning of Oct. 31 when a white vehicle sailed through the intersection and plowed directly into her.
Dashcam footage obtained exclusively by CTV News Toronto shows Elena flying through the air from the impact.
"It's very hard to watch because I could have been dead," she said.
“The first thing I remembered was that I was lying on the asphalt with blood dripping from my nose and I thought, ‘I need to check if I can move my toes.'"
Witnesses later told her that it looked like she was launched four or five metres in the air.
The crash left her with a fractured pelvis, severe bruising all over her body and missing teeth. “Not too much,” Elena said, given the seriousness of the collision.
“I just can't believe it, how a person can do something like this to another human being. It's impossible (to believe),” she said.
“It could have been anybody… A child or an elderly person or pregnant mother. I did nothing wrong.”
Elena said a crowd of people waiting at the nearby bus stop rushed over to help her until emergency services arrived.
“Everybody came and covered me. Even the first car stopped and came to see me. Only the person who hit me didn’t stop,” she said.
Toronto police Const. Clint Stibbe said investigators are still trying to locate the vehicle involved and identify its driver.
They’re appealing to the public to help them find the culprit, asking anyone who recognizes the vehicle to get in touch with them.
“She did nothing wrong. She is the victim of this crime because of a driver that made a mistake and that mistake is really unforgiveable because it could have killed her,” Stibbe said.
“That driver absolutely knew they struck that woman. They knew she was on the ground, they knew she was injured and they knew that they left her there.”
Police say the white four-door vehicle likely has front end damage from the crash. They’re asking any vehicle repair shops to go through their records to see if they recently fixed any white vehicles similar to the one seen in the video.
Elena, meanwhile, said she’s still suffering from daily pain and will be undergoing rehabilitation in hospital for weeks to come.
“I feel awful because I’m lucky to be alive but the next person that this driver might hit, they might not be as lucky,” she said.
