A Nova Scotia woman is recovering from serious injuries after she was hit by a child riding a bicycle.
“I didn’t see him coming at all,” says Joyce Green, who recently retired.
Earlier this month, the Cole Harbour resident was out for an evening walk with her husband when a 12-year-old boy came speeding along on a bicycle.
“I heard him coming,” says her husband, Eric Green. “Before she got a chance to hear me, he had her on her face in the pavement.”
“Didn’t know anything really, until I was on the ground,” says Joyce. “It was almost like someone shot me in the back.”
Joyce was hospitalized with serious injuries after the collision. Her jaw, neck, nose and teeth were all broken and she will be unable to eat solid food for six weeks.
“Two bones broke in the back of her neck, her jaw broken in two places and four teeth split and a broken nose and two black eyes,” says Eric.
CTV News reached out to the child’s family but they declined to comment on the matter.
The Greens say they aren’t looking to get the boy in trouble. They just want to send a message about bicycle safety.
“He apologized. He was crying,” says Eric. “I said…’I accept your apology. Why didn’t you stop?’ He said ‘well, I have no brakes.”
Bike shop owner Marc Rickard says it’s fairly common for children to have bikes without brakes.
“I’m not surprised at all. We see quite a few kids that are doing stunt riding or BMX riding removing brakes from their bikes so that the brakes don’t interfere with their ability to perform certain tricks,” says Rickard.
Rickard says he refuses to take the brakes off bicycles because it’s not safe.
Joyce says she is focused on her recovery, but wants cyclists to be more careful.
“I was lucky I didn’t have my back broken or any of my limbs broken because I could have been paralyzed,” she says. “It could have changed my life completely.”
With files from CTV Atlantic's Kayla Hounsell
