EXCLUSIVE: Victim describes hit-and-run on SW Barnes Road

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - For the first time, the victim of a disturbing hit-and-run on Southwest Barnes Road is recounting the moments she saw a car barrel straight toward her.

Diana Petty spoke exclusively to FOX 12 from her hospital bed at Legacy Emmanuel Hospital Medical Center. Last Thursday, she was at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center for her husband’s shoulder surgery. She left the hospital to get her car and some of her husband’s things at the Providence Guest House across the street. As she was crossing Southwest Barnes Road that’s when she saw a car, allegedly being driven by 34-year-old Tyler Fetterhoff, heading in her direction.

“I tried to figure out how to get away from it, but I felt the impact and then ‘boom, thud,’” Petty said.

Petty lay in the middle of the road unable to move and screaming for help. The impact shattered her right arm, damaged her liver and spleen, broke some bones in the right portion of her face, and severely damaged one of her legs that doctors had to amputate the lower half.

“I was conscious the whole time,” Petty said. “It was horrible. I’m lying in the middle of Barnes Road going ‘help me, help me,’ because I couldn’t move.”

A nurse from St. Vincent was at the same intersection and saw the car run over Petty. She said that nurse ran into the street to help her, wrapping a tourniquet around her leg to stop the bleeding. Other medical professionals from the hospital also ran over to help. She was loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital where she’s been since.

“Once I got to the hospital the trauma, the orthopedic teams and the vascular teams were there to try to save me,” Petty said. “Sometimes you have to let go and let other people do their jobs. And they saved my life. I am very, very grateful to those people.”

Court documents outline a similar scene Petty described, but what investigators saw were through the lens of a dash camera. The video picked up the collision and license plate of the car. From the video, investigators said you can see Fetterhoff fleeing the scene after the collision. He was arrested a day later after his friend called the police, telling them he saw suspicious damage on Fetterhoff’s car. He was arraigned Monday and charged with reckless driving, assault in the second degree, and hit-and-run.

Petty said her life has been changed forever. She said she’s the primary caregiver for her 102-year-old mother with dementia and she also helps her husband with his medical issues too. She doesn’t know why Fetterhoff ran the red light, but she sees it too much on Portland’s roads.

“Portland, get your act together,” Petty said. “Get people to start obeying driving laws, slow down, and remember that most people have very, very important things going on in their lives. They need to be able to get up, to go out and take care of what they need to take care of, without the fear that someone’s going to mow them down.”

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