Woman dragged by fleeing car

Suzanne Leyden was hit and dragged under a car by a driver who was allegedly trying to flee the scene after ramming into her vehicle in Sandton . Photo: Facebook

Suzanne Leyden was hit and dragged under a car by a driver who was allegedly trying to flee the scene after ramming into her vehicle in Sandton . Photo: Facebook

Published Nov 21, 2014

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Johannesburg - The vehicle behind her bumped her car. Suzanne Leyden, 36, stopped, got out to survey the damage and exchange details with the

driver.

But the alleged assailant tried to flee.

He revved his car and hit Leyden. She fell, got trapped under his car and was dragged for what is estimated to have been 30m.

The 36-year-old suffered massive head injuries.

 

Speaking from Netcare Milpark Hospital, where Leyden is in a medically induced coma in the intensive care unit, her older sister Marlize said what happened was gruesome.

“I can’t believe the person did not feel that she was under the car. I am angry… I am also filled with hate,” she said.

At about 7am on Thursday, Suzanne was on her way to work at Sandown High School in Sandton, where she is an Afrikaans teacher.

She was involved in a minor bumper bashing on the corner of William Nicol and Sandton drives.

Marlize said their father is in the insurance business. The car Leyden was driving at the time was her boyfriend’s, so she would have tried to get the details of the other driver.

Joburg metro police department spokesman Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said one of the men who was sitting on the pavement at the time of the accident told them that a man in a white bakkie had hit Leyden’s car from behind.

The mother of a 5-year-old boy then got out of the car and went to speak to the man.

“The man said it looked like they argued and the woman tried to grab the keys of the bakkie from outside, but the driver pulled off.

Her clothing got caught on the car and she got dragged. The driver never stopped,” Minnaar said.

One of the first people to arrive at the scene said that when she saw Leyden lying in the middle of the tarmac, she thought she was a pedestrian who had been hit by a car while trying to cross the road.

The woman, who identified herself only as Mrs Oosthuizen, said Leyden was badly injured.

“She was trying to sit up and I told her to lie down.

“She did not know what had happened. While we were there, one of the street vendors came to us with her cellphone and said ‘Here’s her phone and there’s her car’.

“I could not understand how she (Leyden) got there, because from where her car was and where we found her was quite a distance.

“That’s when the vendor told us what happened.”

Oosthuizen said she went to see the damage on the car herself, and it was just a small bump on the rear.

Leyden has bleeding on her brain and is in a critical but stable condition.

Marlize said her sister had an epileptic fit soon after she was brought to the hospital and that her skull was fractured.

Marlize said she was certain that the motorist could feel that her sister was under the car, but drove off nevertheless.

“It’s gruesome! She looks so tiny lying there with all her hair shaved off. My dad and I are still in shock, we have still not cried yet. My mother died two years ago, and when we came here to see Suzanne, it was déjà vu… the hospital, the ventilators and getting counselling.

“We still have to tell her son,” she added.

Minnaar said a case of reckless and negligent driving and failing to stop at an accident scene had been registered at Bramley police station.

The motorist was still at large at the time of publication.

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