An 80-year-old woman credited three El Segundo police officers with rescuing her after she was run over and trapped underneath a car in the parking lot of a 99 Cents store.
Surveillance video captured the frightening sight of a white car hitting Chickie Lea-Bou as she was returning a shopping cart to the front of the lot last week. The driver, also 80, apparently mistook the gas for the brake, according to the victim.
“The rear tires of the car – the left side — were laying across my ankles and the tire was going back and forth, back and forth,” Lea-Bou said her from her hospital bed on Monday.
The mother of three, who just beat bladder cancer, described the pain as “being worse than having a baby.”
After witnesses called 911, three officers from the El Segundo Police Department quickly responded from a nearby station and lifted the car off Lea-Bou.
“I think we underestimate our police officers,” she said.
The officers have even visited her bedside at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where she remained hospitalized for major injuries including a concussion and a fractured ankle that required surgery.
A grateful Lea-Bou said she planned to make them a thank you gift.
“I’m an artist, and I’m a painter, and … I’m going to paint them a picture,” she said.
Although Lea-Bou has a long road to recovery ahead of her, she said she is inspired by her young grandson to get better and walk again.
KTLA’s Kennedy Ryan contributed to this story.
