A sudden impact, a fall on the asphalt, the pain, and then the escape. It happened on December 12th, shortly after noon, in the parking lot of a supermarket on Via Calamattia, in Pirri.
Maria Rita Cotza, 66, recounted this incident and is now appealing for witnesses to help identify the car that hit her and the woman behind the wheel, who fled immediately after the accident.
According to the reconstruction, Cotza was going to get a shopping cart when she was hit by a car exiting the parking lot .
The driver was a woman who initially stopped, then drove away with the excuse of finding a better parking spot. In reality, according to the 66-year-old, she never returned.
Maria Rita Cotza fell to the ground and began screaming in pain. Her daughter was with her, and she immediately asked the supermarket employees if she could view the footage from the surveillance cameras. However, they refused: the footage, she was told, could only be released to law enforcement.
Injured and in pain, the woman called 112. The Carabinieri quickly arrived on the scene and alerted 118.
The ambulance transported Cotza to the Monserrato Polyclinic, where she remained in the emergency room for approximately six hours. The diagnosis was a sprained right ankle, with swelling, and she required rest for at least 20 days.
In the following days, the 66-year-old woman went to the Carabinieri. Together with the officers, she reviewed the supermarket's security cameras , but—she reports—there were no traces of what had happened.
This makes it even more difficult to trace the driver, even though the intervention of 118 in the parking lot has been confirmed to the Carabinieri.
Maria Rita Cotza now says she's ready to file a complaint, but above all, she's making an appeal to anyone who witnessed the accident . "I'm asking anyone who saw something to come forward," she explains. "Perhaps nothing will change, but I find it abhorrent that someone could run away like this, shirking their responsibilities and leaving someone else in distress after causing them trauma."
