Bay Area father left with extensive injuries after Bradenton hit-and-run crash, driver unknown
BRADENTON, Fla. - A father of two was left with extensive injuries after a Bradenton hit-and-run crash earlier this month. Now, his family is asking the driver who hit him to come forward.
Chad Craven was riding his motorcycle in Bradenton that night.
"He said he was coming home, and he would see me soon and that he loved me," Amber Craven, Chad’s wife, recalled from their phone call on June 1.
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But 10 minutes later, she heard from him again.
"I got a text saying, ‘I was just hit by a truck, and I’m going to lose my legs,’" she said. "It was hard. It didn’t register."
It was close to 10 p.m. when Amber said a white or silver Dodge truck with a trailer pulled out in front of Chad on State Road 64 near 162nd Street East.
"A truck had pulled out directly in front of him at a slow rate of speed out of a cul-de-sac, and he did everything in his power to stop, for the longest time, to avoid it, to even go around the truck, but unfortunately, when he went around it, he didn't see that there was a trailer attached to it, so there was no way to escape it," she said.
She said the truck didn’t stop.
"It made me doubt humanity a little bit," Amber said. "How could you do that? Because that person, you know, that did this, they took so much that day, whether they know it or not. They took a hardworking, caring, a loving, dad, husband, brother, son, and he has now changed in so many ways, because he has to deal with chronic pain and just the fact that it’s difficult, because he can’t provide for us right now."
"I constantly remind him that he is still very valuable to us and that being here is all we need, and to just keep going forward and just trying to take one day at a time," she said.
Amber said Good Samaritans stopped, including a nurse and her husband who wrapped Chad’s leg in a tourniquet.
"They were a Godsend," she said.
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Chad broke his foot in six different places, shattered his ankle, broke his tibia and his fibula and fractured several ribs, his wife said. He spent close to three weeks in the hospital and could have more surgeries in the future.
Amber said she hopes hearing her husband’s story will cause the driver to come forward.
"You left him on the road like he had no value, but he does, and we will make sure that he rises above this," she said. "If you have any kind of heart, I hope you can dig down deep and find the courage or find something in you to just come forward."
The Florida Highway Patrol said the vehicle and the driver remain unknown.
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