Wheelchair Replacement

Last night around 9:10pm my husband was coming home by himself from a church service. Most of you know we are located on 668 Franklin Street which is a VERY wide one way street where cars speed by all the time. As always, before he gets off his minivan he checks to see if cars are coming. Since there were no cars he opened his door and pulled his wheelchair out as usual to transfer into it. He had just transferred into his wheelchair when a vehicle that was going at a very high speed drove past and hit him.

My husband laid on the floor with hopes that the person who had striked him would come back and help. He did not see anyone around nor had his phone near to call someone for help. Unfortunately that did not happed and the driver decided to continue driving away with complete disregard to the crime they had just committed. My husband happened to see the vehicle that struck him stating it was a WHITE SUV that ended up turning left on Millville Ave. I don’t understand how someone can be this cruel and have no remorse for these actions.

Thank god at this time one of my neighbors had just gotten home and heard my husband screaming for help. If it weren’t for our neighbor who knows how long my husband would have been laying out on the street. His wheelchair is completely destroyed and by a miracle of god he did not sustain any life threatening injuries. I went outside and immediately called 911, the paramedics arrived shortly after and the ambulance took him to West Chester hospital to get thoroughly examined as he is paraplegic and doesn’t have feeling in most of his body. He is currently out of the hospital but is in a lot of neck and back pain.

The cherry on top was when a Hamilton police officer that was called to the scene decided to cite my husband a ticket for “opening door into traffic”!!! The police officer blamed my husband for getting hit because according to them he did not check to see if there were vehicles coming before exiting his vehicle. I tried explaining over and over again that by the time he was hit he had already opened the door and gotten out of the vehicle (the door had been opened for at least 3 minutes). It did not matter how many times I repeated myself the police officer stated that either way my husband was at fault. He now has court that he needs to attend on March 29th along with having to pay for this ticket issued. There are just no words to express how infuriated I am with how the Hamilton police officers handled this situation. They had no empathy with the traumatic event my husband had just been a part of. They did not even bother to investigate who committed this crime nor acknowledge that the person fled from the crime scene. I am still mind blown on how the victim of a hit and run is at fault.

Our hopes with sharing this with you all is get justice and to find the person that is responsible for driving that WHITE SUV so they can take accountability and compensate my husband for the medical costs he endured and will continue having along with replacing his $4,000 wheelchair that was destroyed and is now completely unusable. We now have to come up with the funds to pay for a new wheelchair completely out of pocket.

We are currently are working on knocking on our neighbors doors with hopes that one of their security cameras recorded the WHITE SUV to get the license plate number and find the person responsible for this. It’s unfortunate that we have to take matters into our own hands. We were lucky enough to have found out today that one of our neighbors grand daughters was sitting outside on the patio and witnessed everything. She stated the WHITE SUV was going at least 40 mph.

You can only imagine the injustice our family feels. You all know mother in law has a lot of health problems and this is incident ended up leading her to being admitted to the hospital due to the high stress. She has yet to be released from the hospital. Please keep us in your prayers and any information you may have please make sure to message me!