One week later: Long, hard recovery for Hudson Avenue hit-and-run victim

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — It’s been one week since a car hit a motorcyclist on Hudson Avenue in Rochester and took off.

Gary Klaum, 47, is still recovering.

News10NBCs Bekka Fifield spoke with a friend of Klaum’s who was riding with him that day.

“Seeing him helpless like that really caught a nerve,” Klaum’s friend Manny Vilarinho said.

Gary’s friends and family say they are devastated by the crash and hate to see him in the hospital.

Rochester police say the crash happened around 6:15 p.m. last Monday, Aug. 21, in the area of Hudson Avenue and Upper Falls Boulevard.

Investigators say a black car went through the red light and struck the motorcycle, throwing Klaum from it. The car left the scene before the police arrived.

Klaum’s mother told me he suffered a broken back, eight broken ribs, a punctured lung, a partially collapsed lung due to the crash and now has contracted pneumonia.

Klaum’s mother and fiancée tell me he is in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator.

She says he will continue to stay that way until his lungs have healed and he can breathe on his own.

“When I went to the hospital, I was just worried about him and I felt like I wanted the people who did this to my dad to get consequences,” said Samantha Klaum, Gary Klaum’s daughter. “They didn’t think about how my dad has a family. They probably just thought, let me get out of here so I don’t get caught.”