NYPD Searching for Dodge Challenger Driver Who Violently Hit 14-Year-Old, Fled the Scene
A video of the crash shows the Challenger launch the 14-year-old girl almost 20 feet from the point of impact.
New York City authorities are offering $2,500 to anyone that can identify the driver of a grey Dodge Challenger who fled the scene after hitting a teenage girl, tossing her into the street.
NYPD Crime Stoppers say the crash happened at about 4 p.m. on March 27 in Brooklyn, where a 14-year-old identified by New York Post as Xin Yi Wang was walking home from school. Surveillance footage from cameras nearby shows a grey Dodge Challenger with Georgia plates driving—seemingly speeding—down the road toward the crosswalk through which Wang was walking, braking only at the last minute and still hitting the teen.
The driver of the muscle car, reportedly between 35 and 40 years old with a medium to heavy build, got out of the car to check on Wang.
"Are you OK? Do you need me to take you to the hospital? Or bring you home?" Wang recalled the driver asking. Not thrilled about the idea of riding to the hospital with a stranger who had nearly just killed her, she declined.
Under pressure from traffic behind to unblock the street, the Dodge's driver drove one lap of the block, but then disappeared, fleeing after eyewitnesses called 911.
"When she went away, I was like, 'oh, no, you cannot do that. You need to stay and check [on] me,'" continued Wang. "She just ran away."
"I never thought this would happen in real life. I'm thankful for those people that called 911 and they didn't just leave me. I was scared," the teen confessed.
Wang was checked into the nearby Maimonides Hospital, but despite being bashed into the air by a two-ton muscle car, her injuries were comprised solely of bruising on her legs, hip, and torso. She was discharged the same evening.
"When you hit a person, you need to take full responsibility and not just walk away because that is very bad," commented Li Su Wang, Xin Yi's father, irate at the irresponsible driver that could have killed his daughter.
Incidents such as the above are beginning to earn the Dodge Challenger a reputation for irresponsible driving, one formerly belonging to the Ford Mustang. Not all crashes involve other cars, such as one in which a drunk Wisconsin man rolled his Challenger six times, though unfortunately, a Challenger was the weapon of choice for a domestic terrorist that drove his into a crowd of protesters in 2017.
