Caroline Pearce was visiting family in Walthamstow just before Christmas when she was allegedly run over by a woman in a mobility scooter in a ‘deliberate’ and ‘random’ attack, reports Marco Marcelline

A woman has said she has been left “traumatised” after allegedly being run over by a mobility scooter driver on Wood Street shortly before Christmas.
The ‘hit and run’, which happened at 5pm on Thursday 21st December on Wood Street in Walthamstow, left her with “permanent” damage to her leg and needing a skin graft to replace missing skin on her right calf.
Caroline Pearce, from Hextable, Kent, was in Walthamstow to drop off Christmas presents to family members in the local area and had just walked out of a Wood Street cafe with her sister, sister-in-law and nephew before she was assaulted.
Describing the assault, she told the Echo: “I heard a little ‘whoosh’ sound and wondered if it was one of those e-scooters you see around a lot. She [drove] into my left leg first and I screamed. Then she rammed into my right leg twice. I remember looking down and seeing blood. It’s all a blur.”
After a third hit, the driver of the mobility scooter “drove around” Caroline before setting off in the direction of Wood Street Station. After driving around her, the attacker reportedly looked back and made eye contact with Caroline, but did not say anything.
The 66-year-old grandmother described her alleged attacker as being in her “late 30s to early 40s” and “Mediterranean-looking” with “olive skin” and sporting “dark hair” and a dark eye colour. The attacker struck her from behind, Caroline said.
Caroline believes the attack was deliberate. “Accidents happen but if it was an accident, you’d say sorry; you wouldn’t drive off into the night.”
Caroline’s daughter Emily Pearce told the Echo that the attack had left her mother “fearful” and “scared to go out”, with the incident massively impacting her mother’s usually “very active and outgoing“ lifestyle. “She’s always out and about with her friends. She [looks after] my niece, her first grandchild, four days a week so it’s really changed her life upside down at the moment.”
Emily added that a planned trip with her mum to New York to celebrate her 30th birthday this month was cancelled because of the assault.

Immediately following the attack, Caroline went into the nearby Day Lewis Pharmacy where she was given cotton wool for her bleeding leg as she says the pharmacy lacked a first-aid medical kit.
She said, “I was bleeding so much over [the pharmacy’s] floor. I thought, “I can’t sit here with all this blood coming out.”
After being told by emergency services that it would take over an hour for an ambulance to arrive, her sister instead drove her to Whipps Cross A&E where Caroline received a tetanus jab and antibiotics.
She was told she would need skin-graft surgery, but because of the busy Christmas period, she was forced to wait at home in “agonising pain” until the surgery date on the 29th of December.
On her attacker, Caroline said: “I want her caught before she kills someone. Thankfully she didn’t hit a child or someone older than me.”
The assault left her vowing to never return to Walthamstow because of safety concerns.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said that the force “received a report of a collision involving a pedestrian and a mobility scooter in Wood Street, E17, on 21st December at 5pm. An investigation is ongoing. There have been no arrests.”
The Met said it could not provide further information on the investigation but confirmed that an investigating officer was leading a response to the incident.
Any witnesses are asked to call police on 101 quoting JC/010001447/23
Were you at the scene or have any more information? Contact us: [email protected]
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