Woman fighting for answers from hospital bed after hit-and-run in Winnipeg
'I remember every little break, crack and the screams. I was trying to tell him to stop'
A First Nations woman is recovering in hospital after being run over by a van that left her in the road near Winnipeg's Osborne Village on Saturday morning.
"I feel angry.… I don't even want to be at the hospital right now.… I want to get my own answers," Margaret Justine Cobiness Jr. told CBC News from Health Sciences Centre on Sunday.
"I want justice. I want to find the people who did this to me."
Cobiness said she was supposed to go play pool at Sonix Bar & Grill when her Uber ride was cancelled. So she decided to make her way on foot down a sidewalk.
Just as she was getting closer to the Osborne Street underpass, Cobiness said she saw a white van pulling up as she waited to cross the road.
She said she made eye contact with the driver and assumed it was safe to walk across.
"I got to the passenger side of his vehicle and he pressed on the gas," she said. "I fell to the ground. I tried getting up and he ran right over me," she said.
"I remember every little break, crack and the screams. I was trying to tell him to stop."
Cobiness said the driver backed up and drove over her a second time before speeding off.
"I was just trying to stand up but with my bones feeling like Jell-O," she said.
Cobiness fell to the ground and had to drag herself off the street out of fear she could get hit by another car, she said.
A passerby, who told Cobiness he hadn't seen what happened but heard her screams, came to help and called 911.
"I was in shock, everything was happening so fast. I was kind of processing what was happening.… I couldn't breathe. I was blacking in and out," she said.
'I thought I was next'
Cobiness said the crash left her with several broken bones, including in her pelvis, shoulder, ribs and collarbone.
Her body is also bruised with road burn and a large scratch mark from being underneath the van, she said.
She believes the crash was intentional, and that the driver would have come back to help her if it was an accident.
Winnipeg police are looking for the driver of a white van involved in a hit-and-run on the weekend, a news release said Monday.
Police describe the vehicle as a large, white cargo-style van that drove north on Osborne Street.
They ask anyone with information — including anyone with video of the incident or anyone who thinks they are the driver of the vehicle — to call officers at 204-986-7085, call Crime Stoppers at 204-786-8477 or submit a tip online at winnipegcrimestoppers.org.
On Sunday, police told CBC News that while the investigation continues, there is no indication the incident was an attempted abduction, as Cobiness's family suggested at a rally on Saturday.
But Cobiness disagrees with the police and believes she was going to be kidnapped.
"They're not me, they're not Indigenous, they're not a woman.… They'll never know that feeling and I hope they never get to know that feeling, because no one deserves that," she said.
"There are so many unsolved cases that a lot of my people have been going through and no one's listening. I survived and I am here to tell my story."
Indigenous women and girls have experienced violence rates higher than their non-Indigenous counterparts, says a report from Statistics Canada.
"I thought I was next," Cobiness said. "That was my only thought."
Even before the crash happened, Cobiness said she hadn't felt safe walking the streets of Winnipeg.
She wants her story to be a cautionary tale it doesn't happen to any other person, Indigenous or non-Indigenous.