Hit-and-run victim wants to thank stranger who followed the driver, leading to an arrest
By Hayley Crombleholme
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DAYTONA BEACH, Florida (WESH) — A Daytona Beach man said he’s lucky to be alive after being hit by an alleged hit-and-run driver on Dec. 13.
Jim Waskowiak said he took to social media to try and find the person who followed that driver and led to an arrest.
Dec. 13 should have been a good day for him.
“It was my 54th birthday,” he said.
He had plans to head out around 10 p.m. that night on his motorcycle. He wouldn’t make it to his destination.
“Out of nowhere, just a pair of headlights and the grill of a car boom,” he said. “I couldn’t respond quickly enough, there’s just no way I had to absorb it. I guess I went over the hood.”
He said he doesn’t remember much from the crash, but an arrest report said it happened at an intersection on Rose Avenue in Daytona Beach.
“I woke up in the hospital probably 12 hours later,” Waskowiak said.
He said he was released from the hospital Sunday night, more than a week later.
“Scews into my pelvis and my femur. Screws into my wrist. I have a fractured sternum. A couple broken ribs,” Waskowiak said.
Waskowiak said that after he was hurt, a friend started looking into what happened to him.
“Told me how the pursuit went down that somebody had seen me get hit and followed them all the way over to the beachside,” he said.
When he got out of the hospital, he started posting on social media pages trying to track that person down.
“That person saved my life. That person was an angel,” Waskowiak said. “I could have died if that person hadn’t been there. I might not have been discovered for hours. I might have been dead.”
Waskowiak said he hadn’t had a chance to request a report from police yet. But we got it, and it said before Daytona Beach police officers responded to the crash, there just so happened to be a detective and a sergeant at an intersection nearby.
The report says, “They heard a loud bang consistent with the sound of a crash.” It says the detective looked in the direction of the noise and saw a car speeding from the scene with “extensive front-end damage,”
It says the detective followed the driver to some apartments. The driver was detained, according to court records, it was allegedly Ireshae Carn. She is now facing charges, including DUI, causing serious bodily injury and leaving the scene.
Waskowkiak said he’s not sure what would have happened if that detective and sergeant hadn’t been there. He plans to try and get in touch with them.
“Oh, without a doubt. I’ll never stop until I meet them,” he said.
And until then, he has a message for them.
“You are extraordinary human beings, and I can’t thank you enough. God bless you both,” Waskowkiak said.
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