A HIT-and-run driver who knocked down and paralysed a Sheffield woman has been urged to give himself up at last - after his victim died 20 years on from her terrible injuries.
Sheffield mum Joy Read was left quadriplegic, almost blind, and unable to talk after being hit on the head by the wing mirror of a passing van as she tried to cross the A61 Penistone Road outside her home in Barnes Green, Grenoside, in October 1988.
Despite an extensive police appeal the driver of the white van has never been traced.
What do you think? Add your comment below.Today Sheffield coroner Christopher Dorries urged the driver - or anyone who knows his identity - to examine their conscience at last.
"Twenty years have passed and it may be the driver wants to make himself known to get that matter clear," he said.
"It may be that in those 20 years someone has shot their mouth off in a pub or a club about how they got away with something all those years ago.
"There is all the more chance someone knows something, and I am clear the police would still like information."
A Sheffield inquest heard Joy, a teaching assistant at Burncross School, had just got off the bus from Chapeltown with her mum and was trying to cross the road to her home when the collision happened.
PC Danny Church, who compiled a report on the incident, said: "Leaves on the branches of the trees would have hampered Mrs Read's view - she would have had to stand near the kerb edge to get a clear view.
"A Transit van negotiated the bend and its near side wing mirror collided with her head. The van did not stop and has never been traced."
In a statement Joy's husband Les said he arrived home to the scene of the accident, then faced the "horror" of realising it had involved his wife, then aged 42.
Joy spent the next four years in hospital and, when she was eventually allowed home, required 24-hour care.
Les said the last 20 years had been very traumatic for himself, Joy, and their now grown-up son Steven, 13 at the time.
Les said there was a marked deterioration in his wife's condition over the last six months of her life.
She was admitted to the Northern General Hospital last December suffering pneumonia, was allowed home for Christmas, but was then readmitted in the new year with laboured breathing.
She died six days later, aged 61.
Dr Rodney Hughes, a consultant respiratory physician at the Northern General Hospital, said her death was "undoubtedly" linked to the collision.
He gave the cause of death as aspiration pneumonia, together with the effects of quadriplegia caused by a head injury.
Recording a narrative verdict Mr Dorries said: "She became quadriplegic as a consequence of her injury, and her death was in direct consequence of the effects of her disability."
READ MOREWe're lost souls since Joy diedMain news indexRead more featuresSport headlinesThe full article contains 514 words and appears in Sheffield Star newspaper.
