A SHOPPING trip turned into a nightmare for an 82-year-old woman who almost lost her leg after being struck by a pensioner driving a motorised wheelchair.

To make matters worse, it is the second time in two years that Doris Wighton, of Pretoria Road, Chingford, has become the victim of a demon pavement driver.

On the previous occasion, it was an invalid carriage that caused her serious injury.

Mrs Wighton, who was shopping with her niece, Sam Stephens, last October, said: "I was arm-in-arm with my niece in the High Street in Bishop's Stortford and we were walking down to have a cup of tea. As we turned left this woman smashed into me. She must have been right behind me.

"The crash threw me up in the air. You've never seen anything like it, I was screaming with the pain. The woman in the chair who was elderly spoke to me just after it happened and said 'you should be in this chair' which was a terrible insult considering what had just happened."

Immediately afterwards, Mrs Wighton's niece, who lives in Loughton, rang police but while she was doing so, the woman in the chair disappeared.

Mrs Wighton was taken to Princess Alexandra Hospital, Harlow, where accident and emergency staff dressed the injury and discharged her later that day. But within days the injury had worsened, forcing her to seek a second opinion at Whipps Cross Hospital.

Doctors could not deal with the infected wound so two days later, Mrs Wighton was admitted to Chelmsford's Broomfield Hospital where she underwent surgery, including a skin graft.

She said: "When I took the dressing off my leg was black. It frightened me to death because they said there was a risk of gangrene. It was so bad a young nurse in her first day on the ward took one look at it and fainted across my bed. It was terrible. I honestly thought I would lose my leg."

The accident was the second time in less than two years that Mrs Wighton has been struck by a motorised wheelchair. She suffered a wound to her left leg in Station Road, Chingford, in March, 2002, which required 15 stitches.

The October incident meant she had to cancel a 16-day Caribbean cruise.

She filed an official police report about the October incident but the chair woman has yet to be traced.

Mrs Wighton said: "The people who drive these wheelchairs are not regulated or registered. Anyone can buy them. We've been back to Bishop's Stortford several times since I got out of hospital to look for the woman but we've not found her.

"Perhaps if the owners of these devices were registered we would have had more luck."