The family of a woman who suffered severe brain damage after being run over by a New York driver said insurance companies were refusing to pay for treatment because she would not recover from her near-vegetative state.
Mimi Silver Liebenberg, 37, was run over by Clossie Spencer, 29, last August while crossing the street while looking for a home in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Spencer reversed into Liebenberg in an SUV while parking, then fled the scene after seeing what he had done. He was finally arrested last week and charged with reckless driving, assault and leaving the scene with injuries.
Liebenberg was in a coma for seven weeks after the accident and after surfacing was unable to speak, control her body, had lost her memory and was completely unable to take care of herself.
Doctors have said Liebenberg’s condition is unlikely to ever improve, and her family said insurers used that prognosis to stop paying for the treatment.
Mimi Silver Liebenberg, 37, was pulled over last August while crossing the street while looking for a home in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn
Liebenberg’s sister, Creecy Richardson-Creef, told the New York Daily News the situation was a “nightmare that will never end.”
“Our mother, who is 63 years old, has been in all these traumatic brain injury hospitals and facilities with my sister for the last five and a half months,” she said. “It also affected my mother and her health.”
She said the insurance companies gave up on her sister’s recovery and that getting her to pay for treatment had become a full-time job.
“They don’t think it’s medically necessary, that’s their excuse,” Richardson-Creef said. “She is treated as less than human.”
After Liebenberg awoke from her coma, she was barely able to function.
“She couldn’t control her arms and legs and had to be held so she wouldn’t hurt herself,” her sister said. “In her head she thinks she’s speaking clearly, but what we’re hearing is nonsense. She gets very frustrated.’
Richardson-Creef added that her sister’s memory was unreliable, compounding the daily trauma of her new life.
“We have to keep telling her that she was hit by a car,” she said. “Every time she is shocked and appalled anew.”
Pacific Street near Buffalo Ave where Liebenberg was run over while crossing a crosswalk
Before the accident, Liebenberg had been pursuing her “dream job” as an architect.
“She went back to school and graduated,” her sister said. “She loved her job and she was so good at it.”
“She had finally gotten there and now she’s just going to be someone who’s on Medicaid, on government benefits, and disabled.”
“It’s like she’s there, but she’s not,” she said. “She has lost her dignity and independence and there is nothing we can do to help her. She has been robbed of her life.”
“She loved being in New York,” Richardson-Creef said. “She loved the art and the music and the energy. She was someone who cared and defended people who were underrepresented and misunderstood. Now she can’t walk or brush her own teeth.”
Spencer was arrested last week, months after the accident.
Footage from August 14 showed him rapidly reversing down Pacific Street near Buffalo Ave before going over Liebenberg as she passed a crosswalk.
The footage showed him getting out of his car and looking down at Liebenberg where she was lying before getting back into his SUV and driving away.
It is believed that he was looking for a parking space when he met Liebenberg.
“I just don’t get it,” Richardson-Creef said.
“I’m glad they arrested him and I hope prosecutors will prosecute him to the fullest extent permitted by law because this was the worst thing that ever happened to my family.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong, she just crossed the street,” she said. “I want her life to matter because it matters to me and my kids and my poor mother.”