MIAMI SPRINGS, Fla. – A man hit a construction worker over the weekend in Miami Springs, leaving him writhing in pain on the ground until a passing police officer stopped to help, authorities said. They said he shouldn’t have been driving to begin with — and is now facing charges.
According to an arrest report, the Miami Springs police officer, responding to another call, saw the worker lying on the pavement in the 500 block of East Drive at around 12:50 a.m. Sunday.
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He was “screaming in pain” and “asking for help,” authorities said. He would tell police that he was grabbing equipment from his truck when he saw a Ford F-150 barreling towards him at a “high rate of speed.”
Authorities said the driver, later identified as Elkis Rivero, 45, of Hialeah, hit the victim’s left leg, causing it to break and the front passenger’s side mirror hit him in the torso, causing it to break off.
Medics took the worker to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center in serious condition.
Soon after Miami Springs police put out a be-on-the-lookout notice, Hialeah police called to inform them that its officers had pulled over the F-150 in the 500 block of East 23rd Street “for striking two vehicles and fleeing the scene,” the report states.
The pickup had “the front right passenger side mirror missing and heavy damage to the front end of the vehicle,” it states.
Police said Rivero told them he had been eating dinner at the Pato Tipico Restaurant on Northwest 36th Street, about two blocks south of the crash site and drove north on East Drive, but didn’t recall hitting the victim.
Two additional statements were redacted from the publicly-released arrest report.
Rivero was booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Monday morning, facing charges of leaving the scene of a crash causing serious bodily injury, knowingly driving on a suspended license and driving on a license expired for more than six months.
The Cuban national’s bond was listed as “to be set” in online jail records as of Monday afternoon.