A 26-year-old Manhattan woman told the Post on Friday how she was knocked unconscious when struck by a car driven by a pint-sized 12-year-old — who needed a baby booster seat to see over the dashboard.
Haley Hill, an Audible editor from the Lower East Side, recalled how she was out for a jog late Tuesday morning – to get her “blood pumping” before beginning her work-from-home routine – when the kid plowed into her during his three-borough Halloween joy ride.
“I blacked out from shock and trauma,” said Hill, adding she was in the crosswalk at the time. “I know that it hit me straight on – like my knees are pretty beat up, and I’m all scraped up, and I went in the air.”
“The next thing I know is I have bystanders running to me, and I get up,” she said. “I realized like, ‘Oh my God, my legs work.
“And the next thing I know is I’m just standing in shock, and the police just keep chasing the car down Houston Street.”
A good Samaritan who was “very shaken up by seeing my body flying” stayed with Hill and called an ambulance, she said.
She was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, where she remained for six or seven hours – but amazingly, the impact of the collision only left her with scrapes and bruises.
She said a cop at the scene at told her, “You should have seen how tiny that 12-year-old was.
“Part of me felt better about it because I thought it was like a high-speed drug chase or something,” she said of being hit in the crash.
“Miraculously, I’m scraped and bruised, but I don’t have any breaks. I don’t have a concussion. I don’t have internal bleeding,” Hill said.
According to police officials and sources, the tiny car thief began his four-wheeled adventure Monday night when he allegedly boosted a Hyundai SUV on Staten Island, getting behind the wheel next to a 16-year-old gal pal and taking off.
He sped over the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn, then over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, police and law enforcement sources said.
On Tuesday at around 11 a.m., an NYPD patrol picked up the stolen vehicle and tried to pull the driver over at Canal and Allen streets near Chinatown — but he took off, hitting several vehicles near Houston and Allen streets.
That’s where Hill says she was hit, too.
“Basically all I know is that if that 12-year-old hadn’t hit those cars first, I’d surely be dead I think, because it slowed them down,” she said.
The fleeing SUV then crashed again at Ridge and Stanton Streets on the Lower East Side, where the pre-teen driver was taken into custody, police said.
In addition to Hill’s injury, four other people were hurt – all of whom were drivers of the vehicles that had been struck, the NYPD said.
The minor menace and his teen friend were not identified because of their ages.
But police said Wednesday that both were charged with criminal possession of stolen property, reckless endangerment and unauthorized use of a vehicle without the owner’s consent.
Under state law, the young driver and passenger will face charges as juveniles in Family Court.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, but you know, you hear crazy stories in New York,” Hill said. “And like it was a freak thing that I got hit, but I really feel like it could have been anyone.”