Amateur Forensics

[inventrix]

Last night as I was settling in for bed, there was a big crash out by the front of the apartments, which I thought was a less-big crash from behind and wrote off as someone throwing something in the recycling or the dumpster. But no. Turns out someone crashed into the metal railing between the sidewalk and the road.

In their car.

And drove away.

So today after we got back from church and brunch, I wandered over to look at the railing. See, the giant chunk of the fence missing was obvious, but I noticed as we were pulling out of the parking lot this morning that the end of the fence, by the parking lot entrance, had also clearly been taken out. So I was very curious: was the driver coming out from our parking lot? Turning in? Could we figure it out?

The answer: YES, we could!

I'm not going to go through the entire process and details but from the debris patterns and few visible skid marks, we determined that the driver was going the other way, on the other side of the road, and managed to cross over at least the two (apparently empty) lanes of opposing traffic, jump the curb, plow throw the clearly insufficient metal railing, take stock of the situation after losing a headlight and probably a rearview mirror, then drive down along the sidewalk about twenty feet before pulling back onto the road - avoiding the tree next to the sidewalk and the pile of plowed snow on the edge of the parking lot, but not noticing the end of the railing and taking it out in the process, damaging their other headlight.

And then they drove away.

Comments

[inventrix]

(I say "we" but really it was just me, we drew the same conclusions mostly independently.)

[aldersprig]

*grin* Awesome. Not so much the crash, though.

We once had a guy run over our mailbox (was okay, Dad hated it), then run over our neighbor's mailbox, dent another neighbor's fence, and leave skid marks before getting away - but, you see, our neighbors are on the other side of the road from us.

[inventrix]

Part of the fence crashed into one of our apartment neighbor's windows. Fortunately, they had things in front of the window that prevented them from being showered by glass in their living room.

Their window was like twenty feet away from the busted fence. >.>

[aldersprig]

Woah. That's nuts.

O_o

One of my co-workers had someone drive through the front door of their apt. complex - like 25' from the road.

[clare_dragonfly]

What the heck. How do you drive away after that?!

[inventrix]

That's what I want to know, too!!