Senior warns of walking texters after suffering broken bones

An 82-year-old Saint John woman is warning about the dangers of textingwhile walking after she was knocked to the ground by someone distracted by a smartphonein a local shopping mall last July.

"All of a sudden I was on the groundand whoever it was just left me there," laying on the floor with a fractured hip and badly broken foot,said RitaEnman.

Since then, Enman has been in and out of hospitals, undergoing surgeries, and nowrelies on a walker or a cane to get around.

But shehas started physiotherapy and is optimistic about dancing at her granddaughter's wedding, which she is hosting at the family home in August.

"It's still a process. He said itwould probably be six months before I would be walking fairly goodwithout a limp, hopefully," she said.

Enmansays she didn't even realize what had happened to her at the time, but there were witnesses.

"The [McAllister Place mall]security guard said she was texting and she had her head down," she said.

Now, Enman says, it seems everywhere she looks people are textingwhile on the move.

"I don't know, it just upsets me," shesaid. "There is a lot of it going on."

She worries people don't realize how dangerous it can be.

Enman still doesn't know who knocked her over. The woman who ran into her did not stop.David Greene, general manager of McAllister Place, says the incident was not captured by any of the mall's surveillance cameras.

Enman insists she's not looking for any compensation. All she wants is an apology for her suffering.