The family of a young Irishwoman seriously injured while training for the Dublin Marathon in Italy has warned of a copycat GoFundMe page that tried to scam donations to her cause.

22-year-old Hannah Leonard was struck by a car travelling at high speed while out for a run in Sicily just over four weeks ago  as part of her training for the marathon.

She was struck while crossing the road at a zebra crossing, with the impact sending her around five meters in the air.

She is believed to have suffered a serious brain injury and remains in stable but critical condition, with more operations to come before she can be safely transported back to Ireland.

Her family has since travelled to Sicily to be with her and has set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for her medical bills.

On Lunchtime Live today, Hannah’s father Kevin Leonard said it was ‘maddening’ to find a copycat version of their page on the website shortly afterwards.

“I went on to GoFundMe to search her page and two popped up,” he said.

“One was the one that my brother had set up and then one was set up by somebody somewhere in the United States – a carbon copy of the page that we had set up.

“Now, thankfully, they hadn't gotten any donations onto it at that stage, so GoFundMe were very quick to react and take it down.”

Mr Leonard said the page was a complete “carbon copy” of the original.

“The only difference was that my brother's name and my name are both on the GoFundMe that was set up for Hannah,” he said.

“They'd taken her picture and copied all of the wording – [it] looked exactly the same as the page we'd set up.”

'Overwhelming'

Mr Leonard said the family were already “going through enough,” without having to start “policing” what other people are uploading on the internet.

He said GoFundMe staff have been “brilliant” and had the copycat page taken down “pretty much instantly”.

Mr Leonard said the response to the true fundraising page has been “overwhelming”.

“The main reason the page was set up initially is that we had all these family and friends wanting to help and like, there isn't much anybody can do at this stage, but they all want to help somehow,” he said.

“So, we set up the GoFundMe because we know we're going to have costs and we don't know what those costs are going to be.

“Even getting her home, we're going to have to hire an air ambulance to get her home…

“The kindness and generosity of so many people, whether family or friends… the amount of people that we don't know, that have been contributing to us… it’s amazing.”

The GoFundMe page set up by the family has reached €153,082 in donations so far.

'Devastating'

Mr Leonard said getting the call about Hannah’s accident was “devastating”.

“She had already had the emergency surgery by the time I got there,” he said.

“When we got the call, we really didn't know how severe the accident was, we just knew that they had to do emergency surgery.

“Hannah's such a big part of our lives, she's one of our best friends - to get a call like that… It's just devastating.”

Mr Leonard said the family is just making plans day by day for now – noting that things change each day according to Hannah’s progress.

For now, the family will be staying in Sicily until they can get Hannah home.

You can donate to the fundraiser for Hannah's medical costs here.

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Main image: Hannah Leonard