TV Anchor Helping Hit-and-Run Victims

May 17, 2005 -- -- For television news anchor Sade Baderinwa, reporting on the hit-and-run death of Guiseppe Papandrea opened up wounds that are still healing.

On July 23, 2004, Baderinwa was herself a victim of a hit-and-run accident.

She's undergone months of painful and frustrating rehab, but still she knows she was lucky to survive.

While reporting for WABC-TV, the local ABC affiliate in New York City, Baderinwa was sent to cover a flood in nearby Hackensack, N.J.

Standing in a street barricaded by police, Baderinwa remembers a car came out of nowhere and struck her. She was thrown 10 feet into the air and knocked unconscious for 20 minutes.

"I survived because the flooded street broke the fall and one of the cameramen held my head above the water," she said. "They thought I was dead."

Baderinwa survived, but suffered a broken arm that required a titanium brace. She also had to wear a brace on her leg and one of her knees had to be replaced.

"The toughest thing has been dealing with the pain and losing my independence," she said. "I couldn't shower, comb my hair or do anything for myself. I was stuck in a room."

But now, almost a year after the accident, she knows she is fortunate. She appeared on "Good Morning America" today to talk about another hit-and-run case that left a family grieving.

On Jan. 29, 2002, at a Brooklyn, N.Y., intersection, Guiseppe Papandrea, a devoted father and husband, was killed when 26-year-old Joseph Cascio fatally struck him with his car, then drove off.

"I will never be able to un-live that moment of going in to see him, his body so torn up like that," said Papandrea's widow, Loretta. "I could not believe that someone could just leave him like an animal to die in the street."

Unlike the driver that struck Baderinwa, Papandrea's driver was caught. But despite charges of excessive speed, two counts of unlicensed driving and two counts of leaving the scene, he received a sentence of six months in prison.

It was not enough prison time to satisfy Papandrea's son Chris.