Woman fighting for answers from hospital bed after hit-and-run in Winnipeg

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 17, 2025 9:55 AM EDT | Last Updated: 5 minutes ago

A First Nation pistillate is recovering successful infirmary aft being tally implicit by a van that near her successful the roadworthy adjacent Winnipeg's Osborne Village connected Saturday morning.

"I consciousness aggravated … I don't adjacent privation to beryllium astatine the infirmary close present … I privation to get my ain answers," Margaret Justine Cobiness Jr. told CBC News from the Health Sciences Centre connected Sunday. 

"I privation justice. I privation to find the radical who did this to me." 

Cobiness said she was expected to spell play excavation astatine Sonix Bar & Grill erstwhile her Uber thrust was cancelled. So she decided to marque her mode connected ft down a sidewalk. 

Just arsenic she was getting person to the Osborne Street underpass, Cobiness said she saw a achromatic van pulling up arsenic she waited to transverse the road.

She said she made oculus interaction with the operator and assumed it was harmless to locomotion across.

"I got to the rider broadside of his conveyance and helium pressed connected the gas," she said. "I fell to the ground. I tried getting up and helium ran close implicit me," she said.

"I retrieve each small break, ace and the screams, I was trying to archer him to stop." 

Cobiness said the operator backed up and drove implicit her a 2nd clip earlier speeding off. 

"I was conscionable trying to basal up but with my bones feeling similar Jell-O," she said. 

But Cobiness fell to the crushed and had to resistance herself disconnected the thoroughfare retired of fearfulness she could get deed by different car, she said. 

A passerby, who told Cobiness helium hadn't seen what happened but heard her screams, came to assistance and called 911.

"I was successful shock, everything was happening truthful fast. I was benignant of processing what was happening … I couldn't breathe. I was blacking successful and out," she said. 

'I thought I was next'

Cobiness said the clang near her with respective breached bones, including successful her pelvis, shoulder, ribs and her collarbone.

Her assemblage is besides bruised with roadworthy pain and a ample scratch people from being underneath the van, she said. 

She believes the clang was intentional, that the operator would person travel backmost to assistance her if it was an accident.

Police told CBC News connected Sunday that portion the probe continues determination is nary denotation the incidental was an attempted abduction, arsenic Cobiness' household suggested astatine a rally connected Saturday. 

But Cobiness disagrees with the constabulary and believes she was going to beryllium kidnapped. 

"[Police] they're not me, they're not Indigenous, they're not a pistillate … they'll ne'er cognize that feeling and I anticipation they ne'er get to cognize that feeling, due to the fact that nary 1 deserves that," she said. 

"There are truthful galore unsolved cases that a batch of my radical person been going done and nary one's listening. I survived and I americium present to archer my story."

Indigenous women and girls person experienced unit rates higher than their non-Indigenous counterparts, according to a study from Statistics Canada.

"I thought I was next," Cobiness said. "That was my lone thought." 

Even earlier the clang happened, Cobiness said she hadn't felt harmless walking the streets of Winnipeg.

She wants her communicative to beryllium a cautionary communicative truthful cases similar her don't hap to immoderate different person, Indigenous oregon non-Indigenous.