CSULA student dragged by hit-and-run driver in Hacienda Heights

HACIENDA HEIGHTS, Calif. (KABC) -- A devastated mother is pleading for help to find the driver who ran over her daughter in Hacienda Heights and then fled the scene.

Isabel Gonzalez, an 18-year-old student at California State University, Los Angeles, was hit and dragged by a car down Gale Avenue the evening of Valentine's Day.

The driver left Gonzalez and drove off.

"They told me, 'they ran over Isabel.' I just got hysterical. I started running, running, out of the house and coming to the hospital," Gonzalez's mother Donna Gonzalez recalled.

Isabel Gonzalez was walking with her boyfriend when the car struck her. She was rushed to hospital and was in the intensive care unit of Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center with a fractured skull, collapsed lung, lacerated kidney, broken ribs and internal bleeding.

Her pelvis and hips were also crushed.

"They don't even know if she's ever going to be able to walk again," Donna Gonzalez said.

Her boyfriend said he thinks the suspected vehicle was a silver or gray Honda or Toyota with tinted windows.

Given the extent of Isabel Gonzalez's injuries, officials said there could be significant damage to the front of the car.

"All I want is justice for my daughter. I mean she's not an animal, to just hit her there like that and just leave her for dead. She's a human being. She's my baby," Donna Gonzalez said.

Her family is pleading for the driver to come forward and to do the right thing.

"Please come forward. She's such a beautiful loving person, doesn't deserve to just have been hit," Isabel Gonzalez's cousin Maria Gonzalez said. "Tell us what happened. Cause she doesn't deserve to be here. She doesn't."

The California Highway Patrol is investigating the crash and is urging anyone with information to call their Santa Fe Springs office at (562) 858-0503.