A furious San Diego man is pleading for the public’s help in finding the driver who hit his wife and left her crumpled on the ground.
Carol Lord, a P.E. teacher at Alice Birney Elementary School, was riding her bike at Clairemont Drive and Galveston Street Thursday morning when a blue sedan swerved into the bike lane to pass another car, striking Lord, according to her husband Steve.
The collision left Carol with a compound fracture and dislocated ankle. The driver fled the scene.
"It's terrible, drivers that leave the scene of the accident, the scene of the crime, leaving someone to die," said Steve. "My wife could have been dying there today."
San Diego police say the vehicle that struck Carol was a dark blue, small compact or sub-compact car with front bumper and hood damage. It is also missing the passenger side mirror.
Alice Birney Elementary Principal Amanda Hammond-Williams told NBC 7 that when Carol called to tell her about the accident, she said she was sorry she wouldn’t be there for the kids.
“She’s totally into building kids’ fitness and making sure that they’re balanced, and she’s into safety. She’s into health. She's a very dynamic person and we love her," Hammond-Williams said.
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According to Steve, this is a day they have always feared as cyclists.
“We’ve been riding together for 20 years,” he said. “She rides three to four thousand miles a year on San Diego streets. Well, it happened this morning. I stopped and turned around and there was my wife on the ground, crumpled. I thought she was dead.”
A surgeon at Scripps La Jolla Hospital was able to essentially reattach her nearly severed foot to her ankle.
Now comes the recovery, which Steve expects won’t be pretty. Sitting isn’t exactly Carol’s thing.
“This is going to be hard on her,” he said. “She’s not a good patient in that regard, and nobody should have to go through this. Nobody.”
