Hit and run rips off the scabs

This morning I happened to drive a different way to work. Getting off SR 500 at Andresen was backed up and I soon saw why. Police had cordoned off the intersection of Andresen and Fourth Plain and were allowing traffic through just north and south bound.

Closer, I saw all the numbered markers and paint markings on the road. I know from experience that when there is a crash, they typically don't do this if there is not some type of suspected criminal element involved. "Just an 'accident'" (even if it involves death) does not warrant this level of attention to detail.

Immediately, with my heart sinking into my stomach which then shriveled into a hard, tight, nauseous feeling knot, I thought, "oh, no, not another hit and run." I pulled into the McDonald's parking lot just to the south of the intersection to calm down. But instead, I just felt more sick because at the back of the lot was a big Suburban surrounded by police and police tape.

A man in the parking lot told me there had been a hit and run. Another hit and run...which of course is what I expected to hear. And the white Suburban was the suspected vehicle involved.

It is hard to explain how hearing of more tragedy, and especially with witnessing some of the aftermath, can bring all of the devastating feelings up again front and center. Grief, rage, despair, helplessness. Rage. Helplessness. Helplessness. Hopelessness. Wanting to cry and wail and scream and break things. Wanting to sink to the ground in a puddle of tears. Feelings are weird, how they can make you feel like collapsing and raging at the same time.

But I am not only the mother of a young man taken out way ahead of his time, I am an activist. I am an active activist who is outraged and sickened by the continuing devastation on our roads and especially by the morally-corrupt people who can leave another human being dead and/or dying on the road alone.

So, I approached the KGW news crew on scene. I told them why I was crying and how I was not just your average onlooker at the scene of a crash. Naturally, I made my story interesting enough that I ended up being interviewed (should be on the Channel 8 at noon). Just coincidentally I had all my activist presentation materials in the car because I hadn't taken them out after going to the Portland Transportation Town Halls recently. So they took some pictures of these items, too (except the bike, I didn't take it out).

And I did of course talk about Medina Alert, the program out of Denver to quickly get information regarding hit-and-runs out to the public for help solving them.

I hope, I hope, I hope that somehow, some way we can stop these preventable tragedies from devastating more lives, that we can not let anyone callous enough to leave a person like roadkill get away with it if we know about it, that we can get consequences that fit the crime into place. I know that good people sometimes do bad things, like hitting someone while texting/talking or driving impaired or just not giving driving the serious attention it deserves, but a person is no longer a good person when they leave. They are cruel, inhumane, selfish, despicable, and disgusting. And apparently they are all around us and we don't even have a clue.