Ginger Clements said she does not remember much about Wednesday morning’s accident.Clements, a business administration graduate student, was struck by a vehicle while on a crosswalk and was wrongly identified by the LSU Police Department as being the driver in the accident.Clements said the only thing she remembers before waking up in the ambulance was that she was in the crosswalk when a car sped toward her.”I realized the car was not going to stop,” she said. “There wasn’t anything I could do about it.”Capt. Russell Rogé, LSUPD spokesman, identified Clements in a Wednesday evening interview with The Daily Reveille as the driver. But Rogé said Thursday morning he was mistaken when releasing the name of the driver.”The report may have been messed up,” Rogé said. “[Clements] was the pedestrian and not the driver.”Maj. Lawrence Rabalais, LSUPD spokesman, said the information was “given prematurely,” and the department’s report management system identifies people by name but not the role they had in the event.He identified the driver as Natalee Allen, who is unaffiliated with the University.”The driver was issued a citation for ‘failure to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk,'” Rabalais said.The violation is considered a traffic citation and carries a fine.Clements said witnesses told her the driver “just plowed right into me and was on her cell phone.””I didn’t have any broken bones,” she said. “I was just really bruised up. I got discharged [from Our Lady of the Lake Hospital] that afternoon.”Rabalais said Wednesday that both the driver and the pedestrian were on their cell phones at the time of the accident. Clements said there were no outgoing or incoming calls in her log or any text messages near the time of the accident.Clements, who did not sustain serious injuries from the collision, said she does not plan to file charges against the driver at this point.”I was hoping to talk to the [Student Government] president about whether LSU could make some kind of arrangements or if there is precedence,” Clements said.Rabalais said the case is now closed.—-Contact J.J. Alcantara at [email protected]
Victim has no recollection of Wednesday’s accident
October 15, 2008