Rochester, N.Y. - “They didn’t just take away a part of a hobby that I do,” explains Kevin Royston.
“It’s me, it’s who I am.”
Royston views his bike as an extension of his very limbs. He rides two-and-a-half hours every night after work. Last Tuesday – just miles from his home, on a road he knows well, his life took a turn he could not have imagined.
“It was a nice sunny day, I had some sunglasses on, riding down the road and the next thing I know my leg is on fire and I’m lying in the middle of the road,” he recalls as he sits in his hospital room at Strong Memorial Hospital.
“I couldn’t wiggle my toes or move my ankle so I didn’t think it would ever be right again,” he says.
Royston says he didn’t see the driver, but one thing is clear as he was left lying in the road, “I never heard the car slow down…I could hear the motor and the tires but there was no deceleration or anything.”
“What kind of person doesn’t stop?”
“It’s hard to imagine someone could have hit him and not know it,” says Jim Hogan. He owns the Geneva bike shop and has ridden the same route – with his friend Kevin – many times.
‘To leave someone in the ditch like that – he could have been dying,” says Hogan. “To not stop is unforgivable.”
Sheriff’s deputies have few clues and even fewer witnesses. The collision occurred on Town Line Road in Rushville, Ontario County about 7:30 p.m. June 5.
They are looking for witnesses or information about someone who was in the area and now has car damage. Anyone with information is asked to call 911.
Friends hope an $11,000 reward will help. They are offering the money to anyone with information that leads to an arrest.
“At the point when he hit me it was just an accident- but now it’s something criminal because he wouldn’t stop,” says Royston.
Royston has had two surgeries including one to amputate his leg below the knee. Another surgery tomorrow will determine whether he will lose more of his leg.
He is grateful to the family and friends who are offering both the reward and lots of support. “I have some good days, I have some bad days,” he says. “I’m going to move forward with my life,” he says.
