City Truck Driver Runs Over Cyclist In Avondale: 'It Breaks My Heart. I Was Very, Very Happy To See Her Alive'

AVONDALE — A cyclist is in critical condition after a city truck driver ran over her Tuesday morning in Avondale, police said. The incident happened around 8:30 a.m. at Milwaukee and Belmont avenues, police said. A truck driver ran over the cyclist, a 31-year-old woman, while turning right onto Belmont Avenue from Milwaukee Avenue.

The driver dragged the woman and trapped her underneath the truck, according to police and Fox Chicago. The cyclist was taken to Masonic Hospital in critical condition, police said. A witness said the woman was responsive as paramedics carried her away from the scene.

The driver of the truck, a 48-year-old man, was taken to Swedish Hospital “for evaluation.” According to Fox, the driver works for the Chicago Department of Transportation. Esteban Burgoa said he was driving down Belmont Avenue on his way to work Tuesday morning when fire trucks and ambulances started crowding the intersection. 

Burgoa quickly pulled over, got out of the car and saw a woman trapped underneath a Chicago Department of Transportation truck. Burgoa and other onlookers watched as a team of paramedics pulled the woman out from underneath the truck. As she was carried away on a stretcher, the woman raised her fingers, a sign she had survived, Burgoa said.

“It breaks my heart. … I was very, very happy to see her alive,” he said. The woman was hit in what the bicyclist community calls a “right hook,” one of the most common ways bicyclists get hit.

In a “right hook,” a driver turns right at an intersection ahead of a bicyclist and then hits a bicyclist in his or her blind spot. Carlia Aiello, 37, was hit and killed by a truck driver in a “right hook” at Milwaukee and Kilbourn avenues, not far from Tuesday’s incident, in November of 2019. Subscribe to Block Club Chicago.

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