His last words haunt me: Pinned under dead Uber driver, NJ woman recounts terror

🚨NJ releases video of high-speed police chase that ended in a fatal crash

🚨A Lindenwold Uber driver was killed and his passenger was injured

🚨Passenger recalls driver’s final moments before impact

WEST DEPTFORD — She was just trying to get home from work.

Instead, Gianna Ellis says she found herself trapped in the wreckage of a fatal crash with her Uber driver’s lifeless body draped across her after what she describes as a split-second moment of terror.

In a raw Facebook post, Ellis recounted the horrifying final seconds before a high-speed police chase ended in a deadly T-bone collision on Hessian Avenue in November.

She said she had been sitting in the back seat, exhausted and changing a song on her phone, when she suddenly looked up and saw the panic on driver Jose Martinez’s face.

“The impact was fast,” Ellis wrote. "And his last words [were] “oh, shit.”

Then all she heard was "the sound of metal against metal," and the smell of fumes overwhelming her senses.

Then came a moment she says she will never forget.

“For at least a few seconds, it was Jose and me,” she wrote. “This man… now lifeless, laying across me.”

The two had been strangers minutes earlier. Now she was pinned in the mangled back seat, her leg numb, blood on her hands, realizing the driver who had been trying to get them home safely had died.

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High-speed chase turned deadly

Authorities say the crash happened Nov. 9 when a vehicle driven by George Linard, a previously deported British national, sped away from a West Deptford police officer who suspected he was intoxicated.

Investigators say Linard blew through a red light at the intersection of Hessian and Red Bank avenues and slammed into Martinez’s Uber.

Martinez, 42, of Lindenwold, was killed. Ellis survived but suffered severe leg injuries.

More than four months later, the Attorney General's Office has released police video of the crash.

After initially presenting a license to officers that identified him as Steve Hill, 28, of the United Kingdom, it was learned that the ID was fake.

A Gloucester County grand jury indicted Linard on two counts of first-degree aggravated manslaughter, second-degree eluding, second-degree death by auto, four counts of second-degree aggravated assault, and one count of fourth-degree fraudulent possession of a government license.

NJ.com reported that blood alcohol test results were still pending.

Hill, who also used the names Steve Rooney and Steve Peker, is also wanted for unrelated drug and money laundering charges in Bergen County, according to NJ.com. ICE told NJ.com that Hill was deported before and has filed a detainer on him a second time.

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Survivor says grief still haunts her

A week after the crash, Ellis said she remained overwhelmed by guilt and trauma as she replayed the moments as rescuers cut her free from the wreckage.

“I wouldn’t wish this pain, physical or mental, on anyone, ever” she wrote.

She credited EMTs, hospital staff and strangers at the scene for helping her survive. She said support from friends and the community has been her only light during what she called a “dark week.”

A GoFundMe campaign was created to assist Ellis with her recovery and surgery after suffering a broken femur and tibia in the crash.

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