Jogging lawyer broke his back after a driver who admitted being on her phone hit him with her car

A lawyer who was hit by a car while jogging is enraged after getting a ticket for the accident, while the driver who admitted to being distracted on her phone when she plowed into him walked away scot free.   

Florida lawyer James DeMiles, 39, suffered a fractured spine and herniated discs when he slammed into the windshield of the car driven by an unnamed woman while he was jogging in his neighborhood of Hollywood Friday around 9am. 

He said as soon as the crash happened, the woman emerged from the car. ‘Out of nervousness, she said, ”I was looking down at my phone.” It was the first thing she said,’ DeMiles recalled.

Three days after the accident, DeMiles was shocked to learn that the Hollywood police department planned to ticket him for the accident, despite a recently passed Florida law that makes texting and driving a primary traffic offense. 

Hollywood police spokesman Christian Lata told the Miami Herald that the female driver told officers that DeMiles darted out into the road.

However, the spokesman could not city the traffic law DeMiles broke because the traffic report had yet to be completed. 

DeMiles emphatically denies the claim that he darted out into the road and said the GPS in his Nike phone app proves that he was jogging on the shoulder because the area he was running has no sidewalks. 

‘This is my neighborhood, I was very careful jogging it, as I always am, and I am only catastrophically injured because she was driving too fast in my neighborhood while being distracted by her phone,’ DeMiles wrote in an e-mail to the police officer on Monday. 

He said as soon as the crash happened, the driver emerged from the car. ‘Out of nervousness, she said, ”I was looking down at my phone” (pictured with his wife) 

DeMiles recalled the accident to the Miami Herald, saying he felt the back of his knees buckle before he twisted and jack-knifed in the air, slamming into the windshield. 

He said the woman said, ‘Thank God, you’re not dead!’ when she got out of the car.

‘I tried to move a little but but the pain was so bad,’ DeMiles said. ‘I couldn’t even sit up. I said, ”Oh my God, I think I broke my back.”

He was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital where doctors told him he was lucky to not have been paralyzed, calling him a ‘Miracle Man’.  

DeMiles now faces weeks of bed confinement and months of having to wear a body cast after suffering a broken back.