NORTH MIAMI, Fla. – For the first time, scooter rider Nelson Garcia is speaking about a crash on the Broad Causeway that left him in a wheelchair and unable to eat. Police said a hit-and-run driver left him lying on the bridge.
Garcia and his partner, Lukas Ruiz were riding over the Bay Harbor Islands bridge returning home to North Miami from Surfside just after 10:15 p.m. on Oct. 19 when police said a woman in a Kia Sportage hit them and “vault(ed)” Garcia “violently onto the roadway and raised concrete curb.”
Police said the driver, later identified as Angela Nicole Pico, 31, of North Miami Beach, kept on going without calling 911, leaving the 36-year-old Garcia lying in the road.
“Can you ask the lady why she left me? Why? I wouldn’t leave an animal if I hit one,” Garcia said. “I mean, what did I do to you?”
Ruiz described the immediate aftermath.
“So I climb up to him and I just picked him up and I was holding him because he was going back and he just said, ‘What happened? What happened? What happened? I’m going to die,’” Ruiz said. “I kept shouting at the car, and I said, ‘Help us. Help us.’ And all of a sudden the car just started going.”
Police said he had to be airlifted to a trauma center. A North Miami police officer soon found Pico parked at the Walgreens at 12995 Biscayne Blvd., where she’s heard in body camera video claiming that she had planned to go back to the scene.
“I may seem a little unhinged, but I’m a very emotional person,” Pico is heard saying. “I just didn’t want to go by myself.”
An officer later said she told him she was “on the phone with her fiance” at the time.
Garcia said Pico, who was later arrested on Nov. 18, forever changed his life. He has broken bones all over his body.
“I can’t walk. Look my face. I don’t have teeth. I can even eat,” he said. “What do you have in your heart to do something like this to another person?”
Garcia said he’s been praying amid the unbearable pain: “Can you give me the strength in my heart to understand and forgive this person?”
Ruiz has set up a GoFundMe page to help with medical and legal expenses.
Pico’s attorney has told Local 10 News that his client has remained in contact with law enforcement.
Court records show she’s pleaded not guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of a crash causing serious bodily injury and is scheduled to face a Miami-Dade judge in a Dec. 18 court hearing.