A Villages bicyclist is facing “months and months” of rehabilitation after being hit last year by a fleeing Mercedes.
Jessica Laube, 60, of the Village of Dunedin had been cycling with her husband, Robert Hunter, on Oct. 30 on Morse Boulevard when they were both hit from the rear by a Mercedes driven by 89-year-old Marilyn Jean Hamilton of the Village of Fernandina.
Days after the crash, Community Watch found surveillance images of the Mercedes and were able to zero in on a license plate number. By the time a Florida Highway Patrol investigator visited Hamilton’s home on Twisted Oak Way, the Mercedes had been taken for repairs to a dealership in Gainesville.
“I know I messed up and I am sorry. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared,” Hamilton told the investigator, according to the arrest report.
The Michigan native has pleaded not guilty to felony counts of hit and run. She remains free on $10,000 bond.
Laube was discharged from Ocala Regional Medical Center and was home for Thanksgiving.
The force of the impact knocked Laube onto the hood and into the windshield of the windshield of the Mercedes, the arrest report said. Laube suffered a serious head injury and had been on a ventilator while in the hospital.
“Jessica is still working with a number of medical specialists on an outpatient basis to regain physical strength and especially her cognitive ability for normal brain functioning. At this time improvements are smaller and more difficult to achieve. Still months and months of rehabilitation ahead,” her husband said in an interview in Sunday’s edition of the Sumter Landing Bicycle Club newsletter.
