ROCKEFELLER CENTER — The British tourist who lost her leg when a runaway cab slammed into her in August spoke publicly for the first time Tuesday to thank those who helped her.
"There's good people in the world, very good people in the world, who I can't thank enough," Sian Green, 23, told Matt Lauer on the Today show, just blocks from where she was hit at Sixth Avenue and 49th Street on Aug. 20.
After the crash, passersby came to her aid, including celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz and plumber David Justino, who used his own belt to tie a tourniquet around her severed leg.
Footage that preceded the interview showed Green undergoing physical therapy and laughing in Bellevue Hospital.
Green, who gave the interview sitting in a wheelchair with a bandage on her leg, said it's been emotionally challenging to return to the outside world, and that she sometimes has flashbacks at the sight of anything that looks like a cab.
"I haven't been out in five weeks. It takes me back a little bit, even when I see a yellow car," Green said.
Green gave the interview with her friend, Keisha Warren, who was sitting with her on a planter near Rockefeller Center eating a hot dog when they were hit.
"I couldn't move. It was one of those things. If I'd have gone left, I would've gotten it. If I'd have gone right, I would've gotten it," Green said.
They recounted the moments before the crash when the cab driver got into an argument with a cyclist while the two hurtled north on Sixth Avenue.
The cab's driver, Mohammed F. Himon was not arrested, but given a summons after the crash because he was not authorized to be driving that vehicle. His Taxi and Limousine Commission license was also suspended for 30 days because he had seven points on his record for four infractions.
The TLC admitted Monday it had failed to flag close to 4,500 drivers who should have been off the roads of New York, including Himon, because of too many violation points on their licenses, according to an agency spokesman.
Biker Kenneth Olivo, 40, who reportedly has a criminal history including assault and threatening to kill someone, was not also not charged in the crash.
Green praised her friend Warren, who has barely left her side since the crash.
"She's been my rock, she really has. I wouldn't have been able to do half the things I have without her," Green said
