‘It’s horrible,’ says mom of nanny allegedly injured by drunk city worker

• Reprints

Tyler Jones, 20 months, and Jennifer Anton, her 25-year-old nanny. The two were part of a group of people hit by a city worker who was drunk driving on Saturday, May 21. Anton was critically injured.

Updated: July 20, 2011 2:15AM

That noon hour in May on a Gold Coast sidewalk remains “crystal clear” in Jennifer Anton’s mind.

In a matter of seconds, the 25-year-old nanny went from pushing a stroller with her charge, 20-month-old Tyler, safely tucked inside — to jettisoning the toddler and carriage away after noticing a group looking back at her in “shock” as she glimpsed a “white flash’’ as a pickup truck careened toward them.

“It was so fast and then all the sudden I was face down on the sidewalk, on top of another gentleman and the truck was on top of me and us,” said Anton, speaking for the first time Tuesday about the May 21 crash.

Her actions during the incident led some to call her a hero for saving the toddler, but she has since gone through 11 surgeries and is now wheelchair-bound as she heals from multiple broken bones.

After about 15 bystanders worked to lift the truck off of her and another man, “I kept asking, ‘Where’s the baby? Is she OK?’ ” Anton recalled during a press conference at the downtown offices of Corboy & Demetrio, which is representing her in a civil lawsuit against Chicago and the truck’s driver, Dwight Washington. The city Streets & Sanitation worker also has been charged with drunken driving in connection with the crash.

Even as the pain — and proportion — of her injuries became more and more evident that day, she was able to tell a firefighter the girl’s name, her mother’s name and that a phone number had been keyed into a cell phone in the child’s stroller.

“When they flipped me over, rolled me over to get on to the board, I could just feel that I was broken, I could feel that the bones . . . were not whole,” she said. “But I continued to ask about Tyler.”

Anton, who had been living in Lake View before the crash, became emotional Tuesday as she talked about Tyler’s visits to her in the hospital, including last Thursday at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

“It’s been, you know . . . ” she said, choking up, “really good. . . . I’ve been with the family since she was born, and she and I are really close. So it was really good to see her. She hadn’t forgotten me.”

Washington, 61, and the city face additional lawsuits filed by several others injured the day he drove the city Ford F-150 pickup onto the sidewalk. Authorities said he had an open bottle of E&J Brandy next to him and his blood-alcohol level was .183, more than twice the legal limit for driving.

“It’s disgusting, you know, I mean it’s, it’s horrible,” said Anton’s mom, Kathy, of Kansas City, of the allegations against Washington. “People just don’t think. My god . . . how could he be that drunk at 12:20 in the afternoon, you know, while you’re working?”

While the prognosis for Anton is good, her mother says it will take years before she is fully recovered, and she’ll need hip replacements.

And her family is struggling with how to pay the medical bills after Anton turns 26 in November and goes off family insurance. Anton’s friends have set up a fund at Chase Bank to help defray medical and other expenses.