GEISMAR — It’s now the fifth day a 22-year-old pharmacy technician has been in a hospital fighting a fractured skull, neck and arm, along with a brain bleed. While Makayla Hopkins continues to improve, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office is actively searching for the man behind the wheel, who allegedly hit her at the end of her driveway Saturday night and then fled the scene.
It was around 9 p.m. on Aug. 15 when Hopkins’ parents say she went to the end of their driveway on Dutchtown Lane waiting on a DoorDash food delivery. That’s when Hopkins says she was hit by a car and the driver of the vehicle fled the scene. After the impact, Hopkins tells UWK that she blacked out.
“I’m glad I’m still alive,” Hopkins said. That’s because she says after she blacked out, her next memory was, “Seeing everybody up in Heaven. My grandparents and my cousin, and they kept telling me it wasn’t my time yet.”
When she woke up, she says she was in a hospital bed.
Her parents are grateful that their daughter is still alive.
“Very thankful. I literally almost lost it when I heard her injuries. Like I basically went into a nervous breakdown,” her dad, Scott White told UWK. Hopkins’ mother, Jessica Brock White recalled the moments after her daughter was struck.
“She was bleeding from her head in my arms, and I’m screaming for help. Neighbors stop; they help. They blocked the road where I could just sit in the road until the ambulance got there and airmed,” she said.
They said that when they heard the sounds of the crash from inside the home, they initially thought the DoorDash driver might have hit one of their vehicles.
“That’s how loud it was. When we heard the vehicle speeding off with the loud exhaust, it kind of threw us a different point. As soon as we started hearing hollering and screaming from Makayla’s brother Michael from running outside, that’s when we all just jumped up and and ran out the house and found out what actually happened,” White explained.
“We thought that she was going to die,” her mother said.
But now, five days since the hit and run in Ascension Parish, Hopkins says she’s still “feeling pretty bad” but grateful she’s alive, a sentiment her parents share. In fact, both says their faith is now even stronger, especially after hearing their daughter explain things that no one else would know.
“She saw some family members up there, grandfather and my baby that I lost. She was talking to her little brother. Told her it wasn’t her time and touched her hand and told her to go back to us,” her mother told UWK, as she stood at her daughter’s bedside in the hospital.
Now, the parents await updates from APSO on the driver who hit their daughter, but deputies are relying on help from the public to help identify and locate the driver.
If you have any information that might help identify the driver, contact the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office anonymously at (225) 621-4636, by texting 847411 from any cellular device, or by contacting Capital Region Crime Stoppers at (225) 344-STOP (7867). You must call Capital Region Crime Stoppers to be eligible for a cash reward.
You can help Hopkins and her family with expenses in her recovery by donating to their GoFundMe here. The funds will help with medical expenses, rehabilitation and recovery, medications, transportation, time away from work to care for her, household expenses, and other costs that arise as she continues healing.
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