SCRANTON -- A mother of seven has serious injuries after a car hit her and then kept going.
It happened at the site of a deadly pedestrian accident not too long ago.
The family told Scranton police the woman was walking Wednesday night to a store to get cigarettes. When she didn't return after two hours, they went looking for her and saw all the flashing lights with police gathered on South Main Avenue.
Scranton police say they are a little closer to finding who hit Betty Sawkulich and took off.
The crash happened along the 700 block of South Main Avenue in west Scranton.
Police say they have a good description of the car.
Sawkulich is a mother of seven. She's in critical condition. Her family says she's had surgery and has serious head injuries after being hit by a car as she crossed South Main Avenue.
In the morning, a witness told police she saw the driver who hit Betty turn right on Elm Street then take off.
"What I'm thinking, wrapping my whole head around this situation, why would he keep going?" asked the victim's brother-in-law Corey Pacewicz. "And there had to be a reason behind the whole thing, drunk and didn't want to stop? Or the car wasn't legal? There's nothing else really we can do except hope she pulls out of this."
Betty's brother-in-law and the rest of her family say they're offering a reward for information that helps catch the hit-and-run driver.
Another person was hit by a car in December in this same spot on South Main Avenue. In this case the driver stopped, but the man who was hit died later at the hospital.
"Well, kind of more scared than I was. I had no idea that two people had been hit in this area."
Kate Whitaker tells her children to avoid this part of the street.
"If we have to cross the street, we have to go down to the crosswalk two blocks down because people won't stop, even coming down this side of the street, they'll pull out to almost here. I've almost been hit people coming across here once or twice."
The Sawkulich family says their plight is made worse since they don't have anywhere to place blame. For the driver, if he or she is watching, they have this message:
"He's going to go to jail, once they catch him, we're going to see that he goes to jail for a long time, a real long time."
Scranton police say they were able to find surveillance video that may show the hit-and-run car. They're not releasing that video yet but they tell us they're confident they are looking for a 2010 or up to 2013 Hyundai Sonata, 4-door, light-colored or white, with damage to the front of the vehicle's driver side, and possible windshield damage.
