Woman describes being hit by car while walking dog

Ann Marie Bixler said driver blamed her for mishap

ORLANDO, Fla. – The night of April 25 played out like a horror movie for Ann Marie Bixler. It's a horror story she can't escape.

"The pain is so bad that you can't sleep when you hurt like this," Bixler said.

Bixler was on Fern Creek Avenue near Waterwitch Drive at about 9:15 p.m. She was walking her dog with several others nearby, standing under a street light, when a red car sped by and smashed into her.

"I flew. I don't know where, I just got up. There was blood. My head felt like it had caved my whole forehead in. It was mush," Bixler said.

Bixler says the driver, a darker-skinned white or Hispanic man in his 30s, stopped his car and helped pick her up, blaming her for the mishap.

"He goes, 'Oh honey, you were in the middle of the street.'"

She says he then saw the blood and dropped her back to the ground, ran to his car and drove off.

"The big thing was fear that this man had not only hit me, but that I was going to die from what he had done," Bixler said.

Florida Highway Patrol first investigated the hit-and-run and told her it had exhausted all leads. Bixler took matters into her own hands and made her own graphic fliers, showing her bruised and bloodied face. Her daughter began posting the fliers on trees and handing them out, hoping someone would know the driver.

"Some neighbor knows this car, and knows this person," Bixler said.

Meanwhile Bixler is suffering. She has cracked teeth, two dozen stitches, black eyes and bruised legs.

"That somebody could sit and see a 62-year-old woman, bleeding profusely from the head, wounds all over her. That he could leave like that, that's pretty coldblooded," she said.

The car was a reddish color and had long, vertical, taillights. If you have any information on the hit-and-run, you are asked to contact police.


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