QUEENS — A woman was left injured and stranded on the street after a driver struck her while crossing Liberty Avenue then sped away after checking to see if she was OK, the victim said.
Debra Blackwell, 55, was crossing the street at the intersection of 170th Street to do laundry when the driver of a car hit her at about 9:17 a.m., Blackwell and the FDNY said.
"I thought I was dead," Blackwell said. "The car came so fast."
Blackwell said the driver got out and checked to see if she was injured before he sped away.
"He said 'Are you OK? Please be OK,'" Blackwell said. "I said 'No my leg, I can't move it.'
"He said 'Can you stand up?' I was in pain and said 'No, I can't,'" Blackwell added. "Then he pushed my laundry cart to the side and jumped back into his car. He jumped back into his car and drove away."
Blackwell said she laid in the street and thought she was going to die until a Good Samaritan driver served into oncoming traffic to protect her.
"I pray to God that I'm not dead because this man left me there to be dead," she said.
Longtime friend Michelle Jones, 50, said she walking down the block when she heard a cry and recognized her Blackwell's voice.
"She could talk but she was in a lot of pain," Jones said. "She was crying a lot. I talked to her, I told her not to move, that it was going to be OK."
EMS arrived on scene and took Blackwell to Jamaica Hospital, the FDNY said.
She was released at about 2:30 p.m. with a swollen right leg and a bruised rib.
A spokesman for the NYPD could not confirm if the incident was a hit-and-run.
On Wednesday, a top police official testified before the City Council that the NYPD's collision investigation unit only looked into 1 percent of all hit-and-run accidents this year.
Several business owners near Blackwell's crash said no police officers interviewed them regarding the crash.
