Jonathan Cordero’s life changed forever on July 22. That night, he watched in horror as his legs were ripped from under him by a speeding car.
“I was worried about dying because it was too much for me to bear,” he said from his hospital bed at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center on Thursday.
Cordero, 24, said he was sitting at the bus bench at West 16th Avenue and 49th Street in Hialeah and struck up a conversation with an older man sitting next to him. Minutes later, a Toyota Camry came veering their way. Cordero said he was hit first.
“All I remember was me just screaming, ‘Help me, help me. Don’t just look at me. Help me.’ I look down and all I see is like blood, and bones,” he said.
As Cordero struggled to stay calm – not knowing if he would live or die – he said a man came to his aid, and called for help.
“I told him I don’t want to leave this world without saying bye to my mom and everything,” Cordero said. “He was like, ‘You’re not going to die. Just focus and look at me.’”
Cordero later learned that the man he had been chatting with was killed in the hit-and-run crash. The impact threw the older man several feet away towards a Pollo Tropical drive-thru behind the bus stop.
Hialeah Police seized the Camry about a mile away and the driver, Henry Paz, was taken into custody, police said. Paz was charged with leaving the scene of crash with death and leaving the scene of a crash with serious injuries, they said.
Meantime, Cordero has spent weeks at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where doctors amputated his legs. The once-active 24-year-old still has a long road of recovery ahead, but his main goal is getting well enough to begin walking again. He will need prosthetic legs to do so.
“He has an amazing, ridiculously large support system and that’s what makes me so happy. That’s what helps me keep going for him,” said Cordero’s sister, Natalie, as she held his hand.
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