Office manager has to send the bad news today that one of the guys in my office was killed in a hit & run this weekend. We weren’t buddies, just knew each other from around work, he was a nice guy and I had just spoken to him on Friday. He died Saturday.
Don’t know the details for sure but evidently a car blew through a red light, struck his driver’s side door, four people jumped out of the h&r vehicle and ran, leaving Roger there to die. I can’t imagine what his family and partner are feeling.
And I can’t imagine how someone can do such a thing; it’s bad enough to be that stupid and reckless when you’re navigating a deadly weapon, which two tons of steel happens to be, but to then just leave an innocent victim there like a piece of garbage? I’d say a lot of bad words but what good will it do? He’s still dead. I hope they can track the guilty party down by the vehicle although I bet money it was “reported stolen” as soon as the driver could get to a phone.
Just the other week someone hit a blind pedestrian in a clearly marked & signed crosswalk near my house. They took off running as well.
Holy smokes. That is indeed my co-worker, thanks for the link. I’m glad that the culprit was identified and glad that his aunt called the police. Him reporting the vehicle as stolen, so sadly predictable.
And he may have been drinking too. Wonderful. I hope that they make a big public example of him but I fear he’ll do a few years, a little community service and then be out driving around again too soon.
Unless he gets charged with grand theft auto, a slap on the wrist sentance is all too likely. Hope that excuse for a person rots though… And how many of these hit and runs don’t involve boozed up morons anyway?
I forwarded the article on to a friend of mine who is a criminal defense attorney and asked him what he thought the guy would get (based just on that).
His response:
"Assuming no priors, he’s looking at manslaughter, hit and run, perjury, etc…
I was in a red light accident a couple years ago. Nobody was hurt, but now I try to do the following: When you’re approaching an intersection with a green light, you slow down a bit and look both ways anyway.
When you are stopped at an intersection and the light turns green, you pause for a second and look both ways anyway.
I’m not saying that your co-worker screwed up, just offering a couple tips I learned after my own crash.
I ride a bike a lot, trust me I have learned well to assume that red lights and stop signs and other traffic signals are taken more as " suggestions" than “rules” by approaching traffic. I find I live longer by assuming that everyone at the wheel is intentionally trying to kill me.
I also drive a great big truck and I try to look in all 87 directions at once for (kids/bikers/other cars/etc) because I can’t imagine how horrible it would feel to hear a “thud” and know that I’ve just changed a lot of lives for the worse due to a second’s inattentiveness.
Not a hit and run, but an interesting story none the less.
A workstation tech that I supervised at one point got killed a few months ago after being hit by a motorcycle. Note that this occured in the capital of Yemen, Sana’a. The story as I was told it:
-The motorcycle was travelling the wrong way down the street.
-The motorcycle was carrying 3 people. Regular motorcycle, no sidecar.
-The 3 people on the motorcycle were all cops.
He was taken by ambulance to a hospital. Because he wasn’t carrying any ID, the hospital refused to take him (hospitals won’t take you if you don’t have any obvious means to pay). He was taken to the next hospital who also refused to take him. The third hospital took him. See the hospital will take you once you are dead because they know the family will pay to claim your body…
I had a co-worker make a wise crack about te fact taht I look both ways when crossing a one way street. Then on the way back to the office, we saw someone make a u-turn on the one way street to get back to the intersection. That’s why I look both ways. In case some other idiot forgets it’s a one way street.
Sorry to hear about your co-worker Valgard. If the guys were travelling at a high rate of speed, no matter how careful he may have been there probably wasn’t much of a chance to avoid being hit.
We have had the sad case here about a hit and run where the driver hit a 9-year-old who ran into the street after a basketball, and then the driver panicked and backed up to flee and ran over the kid again. Same deal. Driving a relative’s car that he wasn’t supposed to have.