hit-and-run

Police are searching for the motorist who fatally struck a 48-year-old man in the West Englewood neighborhood, fled the scene, and then abandoned the car nearby.

Chicago should have effective traffic enforcement and forgiving street design, so that if a small child runs across a residential street, she doesn’t pay for the mistake with her life. Sadly, that was not the case for Maria Gonzalez, a five-year-old girl who was fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver last Saturday afternoon in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood.

The crash site from the driver's perspective.

Englewood resident Jeffrey Bond, 65, struck by a motorist who fled the scene, was the last reported Chicago pedestrian fatality of 2013. Bond stepped off the curb midblock at 1019 West 59th when the driver of an eastbound maroon or brown van hit him around 4:40 p.m. Thursday, according to Officer Steve Sesso from Police News Affairs. The victim lived around the corner from the crash site on the 5800 block of South Carpenter.

By now you may have already seen this viral video of the world's most incompetent hit-and-run driver. After colliding with a taxi, the offending motorist performed something like an 11-point turn in an attempt to flee the scene, but traffic congestion on this part of Belmont Avenue, between Southport and Greenview, stalled the getaway. The driver struck four other vehicles in succession, bumper-car style, before speeding away. It's a wonder there was no further harm to bystanders or public property, though the driver apparently ran into a tree soon afterwards.

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Last week two different people lost their lives to hit-and-run drivers, in two different South Side neighborhoods, on the same day. Both of the drivers are still at large.

Last Thursday at around 4:30 p.m., a driver crashed into a bicyclist returning from a quick trip to The Bike Lane, a bike shop on Milwaukee Avenue across from the Congress Theater. The driver fled the scene and remains at large, while the cyclist – Michael Leete, visiting from Brooklyn, New York – was left on the ground with bleeding around his brain. The driver may have been exiting or entering a parallel parking space near 2207 N Milwaukee Avenue.