It’s rare to hear a heartwarming story about a hit and run. But Andrew Sipowicz has one.
Sipowicz was a senior at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York in 2018 when he came out of class to see his car in the parking lot sporting a big dent on the front driver’s side.
“It was bashed in pretty good,” he recalled upon seeing the damage to his red 2012 Ford Mustang.
The second thing he saw was a note.
“I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Sipowicz told CBS Evening News.
The note was from 11-year-old Ziarra Griffin who saw the accident that caused the damage.
Griffin returned to the scene later with a note she had written with an explanation and a hand-drawn picture of what happened.
She signed it “a 6th grader at Houghton Academy.”
She said if the owner was wondering what happened to their car, the driver of Buffalo Public School bus 449 hit it.
“She was trying to pull off and hit the car. She hit and run. She tried to vear [sic] over and squeeze through but couldn’t. She actually squeezed throw [sic]. She made a dent and I saw what happened,” the note read.
Despite playing no role in the damage, the note also said “Sorry.”
Sipowicz shared photos of his dented car and the note on Twitter the next day and it immediately went viral with over a million likes before he removed it.
“Shoutout to the anonymous 6th grader for saving me a couple thousand (Bus not drawn to scale),” he Tweeted.
He particularly liked the level of detail Griffin added in her drawing of the bus at the bottom of her note:
“The detail of having two kids in the back of the bus yelling still makes me laugh when I look at it now,” Sipowicz told CNN.
Sipowicz called the bus company, First Student, and heard back the following day so they could file a report and start an insurance claim.
“We will cover the full cost of the repair to his vehicle as well as a loaner while his car is in the shop,” the company said.
The company also told CNN that the driver would be fired for her actions.
Sipowicz told CNN affiliate WKBW that a teacher from the student’s school reached out to him after recognizing the handwriting, which is quite lovely for an 11-year-old!
And according to Houghton Academy’s vice-principal Kevin Garcia, the school planned to celebrate Griffin’s “outstanding leadership” with a citizenship award.
“I could have acted like it didn’t happen, but I chose to do something about it because my mom always said, ‘When you see somebody doing the wrong thing, you have to do the right thing,'” Griffin told CBS Evening News.
But her mom Toccara admits that she tried to discourage her daughter from going back with the note lest someone think she was involved. She said her daughter taught her something important about kindness and compassion that day.
When Sipowicz met the 6th-grader and her mother, he thanked her and told her that her thoughtful note changed his entire mood about the accident.
“I couldn’t believe you left me that note. When I first saw my car, I was angry and then I saw your note and it changed my entire mood. To know that there are people out there with that kind of integrity and honesty, it’s something I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.”
You can scroll down below to see a video interview with those involved.
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