Author: Kieran Rooney and Aneeka Simonis
A bus driver witness could hold the key to solving a hit-and-run that left a man almost dead in Brighton East.
Greg Piperidis had just got out of his car when he was clipped, sending him flying on to the Nepean Hwy, just one in an increasing number of incidents where drivers have left victims for dead.
Police will on Wednesday put two fatal hit-run cases in the spotlight as they seek the culprits.
Mr Piperidis spent a month in hospital with a broken spine after being mown down by a black four-wheel drive about 6am on December 10, 2018.
He had noticed a vehicle driving erratically behind him so pulled into a slip lane and got out of his car near Hawthorn Rd.
“The four-wheel drive came straight toward me and hit me,” he said. “Why would someone ever do something like that?”
He said a bus driver saw the incident and could help police catch the culprit.
Michel Margalit, partner at Margalit Injury Lawyers, said Mr Piperidis was left fearing for his life.
“It’s frightening to think that the assailant is still on the streets, posing a danger to other motorists,” he said.
Hit-run incidents causing death or serious injury reached a five-year high in 2018.
Police recorded 27 offences last year, almost double the number in 2014.
A new campaign focused on the 2017 hit-run deaths of Bryce Airs and Tomodachi Leha will be launched on Wednesday.
Mr Leha, a 23-year-old Tongan national, was found dead on Nyah West Rd in Nyah West about 4.30am on January 29. And Mr Airs, 43, suffered fatal injuries when he was hit by a vehicle while walking home from a pub on Mansfield-Woods Point Rd about midnight on November 25.
This article was also published in The Herald Sun. To read the article click here.