Hit and run victim hangs on while driver remains free

She’s making some progress, but doctors warn that the young victim of a hit and run will be permanently impaired. Today News Five’s Jacqueline Woods stopped by the hospital for an update.

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Seven-year-old Skylar Sanchez has been slowly responding to her mother?s voice, but she is still not fully conscious and there is some degree of paralysis on the right side of the body. Sanchez remains on a monitor machine at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, but on Friday Skylar was taken off of the ventilator and since then she has been breathing on her own.

Floreth Requeña, Mother
?Well she corresponds to you. When you would say, squeeze your hand, she squeeze it. She noh really make eye contact to you and she move and turn her head and turn on her side, but noh the side weh paralyse. She make a lot a lee improvement.?

?She is trying hard to come outta the coma, to try wake up, she would groan now and again. She try very hard to reach this position, this side where she deh right now.?

Mother Floreth Requeña says the doctors have told her that due to the extent of the head injury her daughter will more than likely require constant care for the rest of her life. A CAT scan was scheduled for later today, but because the family was unable to pay for the service, it was not done. Requeña says the examination is important because it will determine whether or not the swelling on the brain has gone down.

Floreth Requeña
?She won?t be the same Skylar Sanchez. She will need a lot more baby love and care. A lot more, a hundred percent more.?

Sanchez?s condition has been upgraded to fair, but remains guarded. One person the family is praying will provide their daughter all the required medical services is the driver responsible for her injuries.

For now, however, he or she remains a no show. On July third, Sanchez, a brother, and her uncle were returning home on their bicycles when a green double cab pickup truck struck the little girl from behind around mile sixteen on the Western Highway. The driver never stopped, although it is reported that the vehicle?s right rear side view mirror broke off. Today, Requeña appealed to that driver to do the right thing.

Floreth Requeña
?All I want to say is, accident happen, everybody mek mistakes. Thank God fi mi baby life right now, that she really the fight for it. I can?t say she get over it a hundred percent, thank God that she live this far. I just want ih?he shoulda mi just stop because she mi have one pulse and all. I never see a baby so blue inna my life. Ih coulda mi assist in help, ih could still come in because if ih talk to me and I talk to ah, I mean it coulda mi be his own kid and he wouldn?t like it.?

Equally disturbing for Requeña is that she believes the authorities have been dragging their feet on the case.

Floreth Requeña
?We noh even find the vehicle, not even the vehicle. The police noh tell me nothing, they noh even di come. The last time I see them dah mi Tuesday, Wednesday. They noh say nothing none at all to me.?

Requeña, who is a single mother, is also appealing to the general public for any financial assistance that can be given towards her daughter?s medical expenses. If you would like to help Floreth Requeña she can be contacted at the following telephone numbers 602-1342 or 205-6049.