A woman was hit by a car last Saturday on Manolo Millares street in Arrecife, by a driver who fled the scene. This has been reported by former councilman Daniel Cabecera, who witnessed the events and questions the attitude of that "heartless" person, but also that the traffic light on that street does not work.
"It is clear who is to blame and there is no possible justification for leaving and not backing up, there is no justification for feeling like you hit someone, seeing them and not stopping... However, there are more details that would have prevented this accident, for example if the traffic light had worked (it has been stopped for months and is one of the most important because it regulates not only the pedestrian crossing, but also one of the most important accesses to Arrecife). It could also have been avoided if that corner had been better lit, since that crosswalk is terrible at night," he questions.
Regarding the accident, he explains that he was driving along that street with his vehicle, on the way out of Arrecife, when he saw a middle-aged woman crossing with her dog on the crosswalk. "I braked gently, because that's what you have to do and so that the cars that were coming would see that a pedestrian was passing. Suddenly a small white car passed me on the right lane and accelerated, running over the woman and her little dog. I did what you have to do in these circumstances, park the car with the lights on and go out to help the person while calling 112," he says.
According to him, the taxi drivers who were at the stop ran over to help as well and some pedestrians who were in the area did the same. "The woman got up and tried to take the dog, who was whimpering subtly and trying not to move. While the ambulance and the police arrived we checked the woman who seemed to be fine, given the circumstances. 'The mirror just hit me,' she said. The truth is that the mirror hit her and knocked her to the ground, she had bruises on one arm and a strong pain in her leg. We managed to get her to sit down and located a family member to come and pick up the dog to take him to an emergency veterinarian. The woman didn't want to leave him there and the ambulance couldn't take her with the dog," Cabecera explains.
He even points out that "the situation was so hard" that a veterinarian who was on vacation and saw the scene from a building came down to the street. “She had seen the accident when she got out of the shower and had to do something,” says Daniel Cabecera, who wanted to highlight both the attitude of this woman and "the great help" of the taxi drivers. "In this story, most of us tried to help and a heartless person fled, leaving behind two victims lying on the ground and, possibly, committing the biggest mistake of his life since, when they catch him, he will face a crime of omission of the duty to help, in addition to running over a person on a crosswalk," he warns. "He didn't even pretend to brake, he kept accelerating, leaving behind a middle-aged woman, an old dog and a mirror lying on the ground," he laments.
To this, he adds the situation of that traffic light, which "has been broken for months and is the most necessary on the street, without a doubt." "This leads me to not understand the disdain of the authorities who keep the city poorly lit and with the traffic lights broken for months and months. It will be very easy to blame others but it is very curious that on the street where I live they changed the lampposts almost a year ago, they put those with pots and they have not yet connected them, they look good but they do not light anything. I live in the center and they have it abandoned, I don't even want to imagine how they have the rest of the city and in the meantime accidents like this happen, and let it be clear that it is entirely the fault of the person who was driving, but they could be largely remedied if the City Council resolved these problems once and for all and stopped inaugurating future projects and commercial campaigns," he criticizes.
