Hit and run crash in Cranston sidelines RI food blogger Patty J

• Rhode Island food blogger Patty Jeffrey was injured in a hit-and-run accident in Cranston.
• The accident has put her popular food blog and its related activities on hold.
• The driver, believed to be in a grey or silver SUV, fled the scene and has not been found.

As Patty Jeffrey prepares for surgery on three broken bones, she can’t help thinking about how her life changed in an instant after being hit by a car on Budlong Road in Cranston on Sunday, Jan. 11.

“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” said Jeffrey, who is better known as the popular food blogger “Patty J” and “pattyjdotcom.”

Her livelihood is all about her adventures exploring Rhode Island, and its restaurants and cafes. Her Instagram account has nearly 44,000 followers. All that is on hold now as she is laid up with a broken ankle, broken lower fibula and broken toe.

Her whole blog life is finding activities and dining around the state, she said. The broken bones on her left leg and foot are “definitely a problem for what I do.”

Right now, she is home, keeping the leg and foot elevated as she awaits surgery on Friday. She needs help doing everything, she said. She is facing a recovery that could take a full year.

Jeffrey also finds herself frustrated by the fact that the hit-and-run driver has not come forward or been found.

“It all happened so fast,” she recounted about the crash.

It was a mild night about 5 p.m. when she and her husband Tom Paolino left their home to walk to Garden City. They had turned from Everett Road to Budlong Road.

“Cars do go fast on that road,” she said. “There was a long line of cars coming down the hill, where Dean Parkway becomes Budlong Road.”

They waited.

They were on the opposite side of the road from Seven Stars Bakery and Chelo’s when they began walking single file to go to the next corner.

“I took no more than five steps, and I heard myself say ‘What the …?’ Then it all went black. Next thing I know I hear my husband calling my name, “Patty Patty Patty.” He is in a daze and I tried to get up. My left shoe was off. I pulled myself to the sidewalk but I knew something was badly wrong with my leg.”

With her memory and witness observations, she said there was a car a block away pulling into Chelo’s. It was the vehicle behind that car, a grey or silver SUV with no headlights on, that impatiently went around that car and hit the couple, Jeffrey said.

“Both of us fell forward,” she said. “I got propelled into the street and could have gotten run over by a second car if others hadn’t jumped into the street to stop traffic. I could have been killed.” 

Her husband was bruised but not injured. He wears a fitness tracker and it froze at 5:11 p.m., she said.

One of the bystanders stayed with her, telling her not to move in case her neck was hurt. The ambulance was called.

Among the things Jeffrey was told in the time after the crash was that people in the Chelo’s parking lot heard the car hit her and her husband. Witnesses gave statements to the police, she said.

“I’m just surprised no one with a Ring doorbell camera saw the car,” she said. “There has to be someone out there who saw the car.” Her family is offering a reward, though she doesn’t know the amount, she said. 

“Whoever was driving that vehicle had to know they hit two people,” she said.

The Cranston Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for information on the crash.