PLANTATION, FLA. (WSVN) - A father of three is in a coma and fighting for his life after he was the victim of two hit-and-run drivers in Plantation.
The family was involved in the crashes while stopped at a red light on Sunrise Boulevard and the Florida Turnpike, Sunday morning.
Jazmine Diaz is taking care of their three children while Jose Cruz, her 35-year-old husband, remains in critical condition at Broward Health Medical Center with a severe brain injury. Jose is on both a breathing tube and feeding tube after the consecutive crashes.
“He’s not doing well,” Diaz said while her 3-year-old daughter comforted her. “I was just coming out of work, and we were just heading home.”
According to Plantation Police, a red Dodge Caravan hit the couple while stopped at the light in their Honda Pilot SUV.
Cruz then got out of the car to inspect the damage when they were struck again.
“I was on the phone with 911, and we got hit a second time,” Diaz said.
A Honda Accord sedan then hit their SUV, and the driver ran away from the scene on foot.
“My glasses flew off of my face, so I didn’t see anything, so I just kept on calling out for him,” Diaz said. “When I finally found my glasses, he was laying on the ground. He got hit by the second car. Both cars that hit us, the drivers left the scene.”
“Nobody stayed behind. They just left my brother on the floor, on the ground,” Barbara Torres-Siegel said. “They just put a feeding tube in him yesterday, and he’s just swollen everywhere. He’s just shattered. It doesn’t look like my brother.”
Cruz suffered a broken right leg, a shattered ankle, a fractured arm, eight broken ribs and a punctured lung, but doctors said they are more concerned about his head injuries.
“He has a few bleeds in the head,” Torres-Siegel said. “The nurse told us today that the neurologist said he has what’s called a DAI.”
A DAI is a Diffuse Axonal Injury, a severe head trauma, which means he could be in a coma for months.
Diaz said the couple just moved to South Florida from Connecticut after he started a new job, and he has no insurance.
“He just started a new job to take care of our children,” Diaz said. “Now, I don’t know how to do anything. I don’t know how to take care of them without him.”
If you would like to donate to help pay for the victim’s medical expenses, please click here.
If you have any information on these hit-and-runs, call Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS. Remember, you can always remain anonymous, and you may be eligible for a $3,000 reward.
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