Woman injured when driver fleeing police hit her car faces uphill recovery fight

"It was a horrific accident," her husband, Al Bonner, said Monday. "I was not prepared to see the devastation of the car and the devastation of her injuries."

Carolyn Bonner spent nearly three weeks in intensive care at WakeMed in Raleigh, where she remains in critical, but stable, condition. She has a traumatic brain injury and spinal injuries, as well as a broken pelvis.

She is no longer on a ventilator but still needs a feeding tube and cannot speak, according to her family.

"We’ve seen some improvement. We are just hopeful," Al Bonner said. "Right now, the doctors are hopeful. We are all hopeful. There is no reason not to be hopeful at this point in time."

Carolyn Bonner has spent her career in the financial services industry, most recently at Wells Fargo, but Pamela Troublefield said her sister also volunteered for numerous causes.

"She would give you her last dime if she could," Troublefield said. "She helped out lots of people, and she would never say no to anyone who was in need of any kind of help."

Her family said she was on her way to care for her mother when the crash occurred.

"She is a giving person, a big-hearted person," Al Bonner said. "[She] loves people [and is] the life of the party."

He described his wife as "a fighter" and said he is confident she will recover.

"We are trying to put her on a runway where she can be successful to make a recovery. That’s the whole goal right now," he said. "You know, marathons are 26 miles. We don’t know how long this marathon is going to be. We just want to give her the best opportunity for full recovery that we can."

The crash ended a 30-mile chase that began in Spring Hope, where a State Highway Patrol trooper tried to pull over a Mazda SUV for reckless driving. The chase reached speeds of 120 mph along U.S. Highway 64 from Nash County into Wake County, authorities said.

Terry Lamar Harris, the driver of the SUV, wasn't injured in the crash. He was charged with assault with deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, felony speeding to elude arrest, felony possession of marijuana with intent to sell, maintaining vehicle for distribution of a controlled substance and careless and reckless driving.

"Right now, my main care is not what happened at the accident," Al Bonner said. "Unfortunately, I can not change that. I can only change the future, and that is what we are looking at."

"I would pray for him if I saw him and I got to forgive him for what he has done," Troublefield said of Harris. "The Lord is going to handle the rest."