About a month ago, Youngstown Police officers were chasing down four juvenile suspects who had stolen a car on the city's southside.

During that pursuit, an officer slammed into the vehicle of Ashley Lintz, a mother of six who had just picked up her eight year old from school.

Lintz, completely unrelated to this chase, said she'd pulled over on Hughes street when she saw the police lights but somehow still got hit, had her car totaled and she and her child sustained injuries.

"I remember seeing the police officer, the gentleman get out, I think he had a cut or blood coming on the side of his head and I just remember him shaking his head and looking at me, that he didn't see me," Lintz said.

Lintz said her child has minor injuries to her face and is a bit traumatized. The situation has completely upended Lintz's life.

"I had a concussion and I still have to go to a neuro doctor, there's like numbing in my fingers, I've lost all my feeling in my fingers," Lintz said. "I have chronic headaches they have me on medication for, I have spasms in my back, it hurts to like sneeze," she said.

Although police are the ones who crashed into Lintz, by law they may not be liable.

"Basically in Ohio there's a thing called political subdivision immunity and it allows police officers to benefit from immunity, meaning they can't be sued in a civil case unless during the chase they behaved in what's called a willful or wanton manner," Corey Grimm, Partner at Ingram, Grimm and Yacovone said. "Essentially, that their behavior was so bad that it was reckless and the police chase was not a chase that they either should've initiated or they behaved recklessly in trying to chase a suspect," he said.

Grimm said proving reckless behavior though would be an uphill battle.

"A court would analyze whether the police officer's conduct was so outside the normal course of a police officer's chase protocol, that would allow the person that was injured to then recover and basically get around sovereign immunity and beat that legal argument," Grimm said. "They're gonna really look at that officer's conduct and determine whether it was inappropriate for, like I said, the start of the chase or to continue the chase and that's something that really requires the plaintiff to prove that this conduct was really outside of what a police officer should be doing," he explained.

Lintz is disappointed in the way this is being handled and said she's seeking legal counsel.

"We still owe on that car. Its not even paid off yet, so you know it's just really depressing," Lintz said. "My only concern is that in a residential area you're going that fast. What if I was a child because it was during school hours, coming home from school," Lintz said.

Lintz also said she's at a loss for what to do about her health and getting another vehicle.

"I don't know if that means we're supposed to just swallow our damages but that's the way it's sounding. Life is much difficult and I just don't understand why that's OK," Lintz said. "I just don't feel like that should be OK. That affects my whole house, like you just devastated somebody's life pursuing juveniles joy riding in a car," she said.

Lintz wants there to be more safety measures in place to prevent situations like this from happening in the future.

"I feel like there should be more precautions in order before you go being able to pursue a high speed chase, I mean I understand if someone's life is in jeopardy or something's like an emergency situation such as that, I feel like there might have been other ways to do this more beneficial that weren't so detrimental to somebody because luckily I was in a car, but what if I had been somebody walking down the street," Lintz said. "If I hadn't had a car to protect me, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have six kids right now, they wouldn't have a mom. That would be terrible," she said. 

Youngstown Police have declined to comment.