Breaks squealed at the red light adjacent to our apartment, but that happens several times a day. I always listen to see if there will be a crash following it, but there never has been.
CRASH!!!!
Running to the door and pushing back the blinds, I saw a white SUV rolling down the street with its hood dragging on the ground making an awful noise. I jumped up and told Dean to grab my cell phone in case 911 needed to be called and then flew out of the door in my pajamas. As I ran down the sidewalk, I heard a neighbor on her balcony calling 911 and describing the situation in earnest. I heard her say it was a hit and run, so I ran faster to make sure no one was injured.
I rounded the corner of the apartment office to see a now stopped white SUV. Panting and adrenaline flowing, I picked up the pace even more. Nothing moved in the vehicle; a rivulet of gas flowed down the street into the gutter.
An older lady was approaching with me and we both tried to look into the dark interior, but could not see much.
Fumbling with my phone, I got the built in flashlight on and started looking into the windows. It was very messy, but other than that empty. I glanced around to see a dark figure in the distance running like hell out of the lighted portions of the street.
The lady said to me, “look into the glove box”, and then she started to walk away.
Dean, now dressed, came around the bend and ran to me. Just then the police sirens could be heard and he went towards the intersection to flag them down.
There, he saw the car that had been hit and the police making a road block with their cars. He got one of the policemen to come to me and the car I was at. I told him what I had seen and he proceeded to search the vehicle. I was frustrated that he did not instantly get in his car and go after the person who fled, but I would find out why later.
Dean came back to me along with the neighbor that called 911. She told us what she had seen and we chatted a bit while the police, 3 now, looked over the SUV. It was then that I glanced down the street to see a cop car scanning the brush with their search light, which set my mind at ease but also made me feel foolish that I did not trust the police to do their jobs!
I felt like a silly onlooker one might see in the TV show Cops, so I asked the officer if he needed anything else from us. He thanked me for sticking around and said that most people don’t. He took my name, number, and apartment number and thanked me again for the help. I wished them luck in the search, and hand in hand, Dean and I walked back to the apartment.
Dean told me on the walk back that he had come out to make sure I was okay. I laughed and said that I did not even think about any dangers to myself, like if the driver was in the vehicle, and was drunk/high, and had a gun or something. I was just concerned that someone might be hurt.
I will look tomorrow to see if I can’t find a news story or something about it. I want to know if they caught the scumbag that hit someone and then ran.
If you run from an accident, that means you think that it was bad enough for someone to get really hurt, or you just really don’t want police attention for any of a myriad of reasons.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Here’s another example of your talent as a storyteller! Maybe another direction you could consider for future graduate study would be journalism. Ever think of that?
April 19th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
ahh, the excitement of the big city….only thing we have like a hit and run is small varmit roadkill
April 19th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Well, our neighbor across the street shot his neighbor’s dog. There’s some excitement.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Was this the dog that was tied up and stayed mostly in the garage of the house on the corner across the street from you?
April 20th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Big city madness there Kaston … there’s a lot to be said about smaller towns.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:09 pm
No, this was the neighbor on the other side of the house across the street. That house has a couple of dobermans in their back yard, and one has a bad habit of climbing over the fence. The guy across the street said the dog was on his property, approching him in his driveway, and (why the guy had his shotgun handy, I don’t know) having reported the dog numerous times to animal control to little effect, this time he loaded the dog full of buckshot, THEN called animal control. I don’t blame him.