A Tacoma woman might lose her foot after a driver distracted by a cellphone call crashed into her minivan as she was pumping gas Sunday in Lakewood.

The 54-year-old woman was in the intensive care unit at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where doctors were trying to save her foot.

Meanwhile, the driver, 23-year-old Yoni Valencia of Auburn, was charged in Pierce County Superior Court with vehicular assault, felony hit-and-run, driving with a suspended license and obstructing a police officer. He pleaded not guilty Monday, and Superior Court Commissioner Diana Lynn Kiesel ordered him held in jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Lakewood police and charging documents gave this account of the crash:

Valencia, driving north on Bridgeport Way about 7:30 p.m., was talking to his mother on a cellphone and having a “bad conversation.”

As he neared 108th Street Southwest, he looked up, saw the vehicles in front of him were stopping and swerved to avoid hitting them.

His pickup truck went across the intersection, onto the sidewalk, through a landscaped area and knocked over a gas pump at the Union 76 station, 10712 Bridgeport Way S.W.

The woman was pumping gas into her minivan when the truck hit it. The minivan pinned the woman against the island holding the gas pumps.

The crash nearly severed her right foot.

Valencia ran away, but a witness took a cellphone photo him just before he got out of the truck.

A Lakewood officer heading to the crash spotted Valencia walking on the sidewalk. When Valencia saw the patrol car, he ran through an apartment complex. Officers found him hiding near a home.

Meanwhile, a U.S. Army medic at the gas station tended to the woman until paramedics arrived and she was flown to Harborview Medical Center.

Valencia told officers he ran because he was on probation and didn’t want to go back to jail.

Stacey Mulick: 253-597-8268
stacey.mulick@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/crime