CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Police in Coral Gables are searching for a hit-and-run driver who left a woman’s car seriously damaged.
In a surprising twist, the suspect initially got out of her car to talk to the victim, but then got back in and fled.
In an exclusive interview with Local 10 News, the victim, Kristina Bado, pleaded with the driver to turn herself in.
Bado said she was driving west on Edgewater Drive last week, and as she was making a left into a parking lot, she was hit by another car that was illegally passing her on her left.
The moment of impact was caught on another driver’s dash camera.
But what started as an accident quickly turned into a hit-and-run.
“It was very nerve-wracking,” Bado said.
Bado said she was coming home from work around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday when her white Honda CRV collided with a black Cadillac moving at a high rate of speed.
The other driver got out and approached Bado’s vehicle.
“I just looked over at her, I asked if she was OK. And she just said, ‘I didn’t see your turning signal.’ I told her, ‘You know, well, I had it on, but you shouldn’t have been on the opposite side of the road,’” Bado said.
After Bado called 911, she was talking to the man who captured the dashcam video when the driver got back in her car and put it in reverse.
“I thought she was maybe moving her vehicle to move it out of the way -- like I say, we were blocking the road -- and he was the one who actually noticed, and was like, ‘Oh my God. Is she fleeing?’” Bado said.
The witness jumped into action, putting his pickup truck in reverse and chasing the hit-and-run driver down the street, but she escaped.
“It’s sad because I think that, you know, it’s a reason why I put a dashcam in my car. I’ve been hit a couple times by hit-and-run drivers,” JB Diedrich said.
Bado said the driver’s tag started with the letter W, but she couldn’t catch the rest.
She now has to drive a rental car while a body shop works on repairing $4,000 worth of damage to her suspension.
She’s hoping someone out there recognizes the crystal clear images and has this message for the suspect.
“You need to come forward and do the right thing, you really do, and definitely need to be much more careful because she could have killed someone,” Bado said.
Unfortunately, the hit-and-run driver’s tag is too blurry to read in the dashcam video.
Anyone with information about the driver’s identity is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.