COCONUT CREEK, Fla. – It’s been over a week since a South Florida man was struck by a car and left for dead in Broward County.
“Why would you not stop? Why not check on that person,” asked the victim, Ruben Perales.
His eyes bloodshot and still so anxious, Perales has so many questions.
“Oh man, how do you sleep at night? Does it bother you at all,” he said.
It was the Saturday Feb. 15 around 8 p.m. when Perales was struck.
He was out on a run, going east along the bike lane on Wiles Road near Northwest 39th Avenue in Coconut Creek.
It’s the last thing he remembers before waking up.
“In the hospital like two days later,” he said of the next thing he remembered.
Perales was found on the road, run over.
Like an animal, left for dead, because the driver kept going.
“My whole leg, the side of my back, and my face, I mean it’s not like just ran over a toe,” Perales said. “You literally went over half of my body with whatever a truck, is what I’m being told, it was a truck.”
“You knew you hit me, and you still drove away,” he added. “A cop called my wife.”
A Good Samaritan found him and called paramedics.
Parts of his leg were shattered and his body was beaten up throughout.
“I do have fractures in my skull,” he said.
The husband and a father of three is known in his Deerfield Beach community for being a good neighbor.
Back in December, he was one of the Good Samaritans who jumped into a burning home to help get a family to safety.
Now, he knows he’s lucky to be alive, but he wonders why the driver who hit him didn’t do the right thing.
“Mistakes happen, maybe it was a mistake, but the biggest mistake was just driving away, not stopping,” he said.
Family members have created a GoFundMe to help with medical expenses, which can be found by clicking here.
Police urge anyone with information to call Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS.