COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (KDVR) – An 8-year-old girl is on the mend after being involved in a motorcycle accident where a driver caused the motorcyclist to lose control and then sped off.
It happened Tuesday when Bella and her father, Enrique Martinez, took a cruise through Commerce City on his motorcycle to meet their family.
“It was a nice day, so you know, we just went for a nice ride out there,” Martinez said.
They were driving on East 56th Avenue, passing Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, when Martinez said a car stopped in front of them.
“He jumped out right in front of us and kind of lost control there to avoid hitting them and just went down,” he said.
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In the shock of what happened, he said he was able to rush to his daughter to make sure she was okay.
“It was hard to see her like that. I just made sure everything was fine and nothing had broken off the bat. She could stand. We were walking. But I put her down right away and there was just… she was badly scraped,” he said.
Martinez said everyone in the area came to help — except the driver of the car that crashed them.
“The guy who jumped in front of us took off straight away and didn’t even stop. He didn’t hit the brakes, nothing. He just kept going,” Martinez said.
He said luckily his father was around the corner from them and came right away to take her to Children’s Hospital Colorado. Once there, she was rushed to the burn center due to her serious injuries.
“The burn center said she was on the edge,” said Bernadette Luevano, Bella’s mother. “If they went any deeper, she would definitely need skin grafts.”
While they treated the wounds and sent her home a few days later on Thursday, she will have to go back weekly for recovery.
“Right now we’re discussing it with the doctors week by week just because we don’t want to open the wounds and get an infection in there,” Luevano said.
In the coming week they will find out if Bella needs skin grafts.
‘They’ll have the burn center look at it again and determine whether her skin is healing well enough. If not, she will need skin grafts. That’s… we hope for the best.’
They set up a GoFundMe to help cover the costs of medical bills because Luevano had to temporarily shut down her business while she cared for her daughter.
“I have to cancel and reschedule all my appointments so I can take good care of her and give her all my attention,” she said.
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But for now, both she and Martinez are grateful to still have their daughter with them
“Thank God she was wearing her helmet,” Luevano said, “or it could have been a lot worse.”
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