Crime & Safety

Cyclist Struck On Massachusetts Avenue Left 'Unconscious and Bleeding'

"As a Mom of two girls I still haven't come to terms with the fact that I could have easily been killed in the flash of a second," Jodi Grant, 44, wrote in an email to Patch.

Police are still looking for the driver of a driving off and leaving the woman unconscious and bleeding with injuries including a broken neck, broken back and broken nose.

Jodi Grant, 44, was struck Friday morning while riding her bike near Massachusetts Avenue and Cromwell Drive. A mother of two daughters and the director of the national nonprofit afterschool.org, Grant had taken the day off work for an orientation at her daughter’s new school, she told Patch in an email.

She was returning from a quick bike ride to Great Falls and was about five minutes from her home when a van in the left lane veered into the right lane, where she was riding.

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“I remember thinking, ‘Oh no,’ because I had nowhere to go,” Grant wrote.  “The next thing I remember is waking up in the ambulance.”

Bystanders came to her aid, calling rescuers and giving police a description of the vehicle – a dark blue, newer model minivan with passenger-side damage that was heading south towards Washington, DC.

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Grant’s husband, Tom Skinner, has since posted a notice to a neighborhood listserv, asking witnesses to come forward with any information they might have about the van or the driver.

“We’re very keen to catch the villain,” Skinner wrote in the post.

Grant said the impact broke her neck, back and nose, broke or cracked 12 teeth and left multiple cuts on her face, legs and arms. She spent hours in surgery Friday and several more hours at the dentist Sunday having her teeth re-set.

Patch reached Grant briefly over the phone Monday, but she answered most of our questions via email because she couldn’t comfortably speak for long periods.

Grant told us she’s an avid cyclist who uses her bike to commute to work, for exercise and to ride for fun with her friends and daughters.

“I won’t be physically able to ride on the road for quite awhile, [and] I don’t know if/when I will be mentally able to ride again since I know there was nothing I could have done to prevent drivers like the one that hit me from hitting a cyclist or pedestrian again, and that is terrifying,” Grant wrote. “As a mom of two girls I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that I could have easily been killed in the flash of a second.”

Montgomery County Police so far have little information to go on, according to police spokeswoman Officer Janelle Smith. Investigators are aware of a speed camera near the intersection where Grant was struck, and are looking into whether it may have captured the driver's tag numbers, Smith said.

It will be a long road to recovery for Grant. She wants the driver of the van who hit her to come forward and “help make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

“If drivers aren’t paying attention or are in a rush to get somewhere, cars can become deadly weapons,” she wrote.

Anyone with information on the hit-and-run is asked to contact Montgomery County Police.


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