KC mother watched a car run over a man 21 times, she says. Then it came at her
Michelle “Micaela” Hernandez was walking down her street Saturday in east Kansas City to fetch her oldest children for supper when she saw two men and a woman beating a man with a bat and shovel.
Hernandez, 26, had been carrying her 7-month-old baby on her hip. She handed the child to a neighbor and called 911. While she was on the phone, she saw the woman get into a car and repeatedly run over the victim.
Hernandez counted to the operator as she watched the woman run over the man again and again: 18, 19, 20 times, the tires crossed over the man as he lay near the intersection of East 30th and York streets.
Kansas City police later said a Cadillac sedan struck and killed the 68-year-old Kansas City man about 7:20 p.m. Saturday. Neither he nor the woman have yet been identified publicly, but police said the driver was arrested.
At one point, Hernandez said, she had a brief exchange with the woman.
“He tried to rape me,” the woman said.
“You could’ve called police,” Hernandez retorted. “Nobody deserves to die, regardless what they did.”
Hernandez said her family’s dog, Ruby, bit the woman. The woman returned to her car and tried to run over the dog. In the process, she ran over the man once more.
The dog escaped and the woman changed course, driving the car at Hernandez, running over her leg and knocking her into the porch.
“I was scared I would never see my kids again and my kids would see me die,” Hernandez said late Sunday morning as her husband pulled up the back of her shirt to reveal a line of long scratches across her lower back. That, she said, was where the spinning tire hit her.
Hernandez was released from the hospital about 1:30 a.m. Sunday. She said her leg has been numb since she was hit.
Doctors said the pain she was experiencing was the result of torn ligaments, tendons and muscles.
“We barely have money to feed our kids right now, let alone $52,000 for surgery,” she said.
Hernandez’s husband, Ricardo Hernandez, is taking time off from his construction company to help care for their baby and help his wife get around the house.
The worst part wasn’t her injury or the financial toll to come, Hernandez said, but rather that the children in the neighborhood saw a man die.
Her 8-year-old daughter was up all night crying. She didn’t fall asleep until close to 7 a.m. Sunday.
Hernandez said she anticipates her injury will cause a lot of problems for her family moving forward, but she hopes the 12 years of marriage she and her partner have will help them get through it.
“But I feel bad for that woman,” she said. “I don’t know what was going in her mind. I really hope she gets some help, but she deserves the punishment she’s going to get.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2020 at 2:42 PM.
