Ypsilanti hit and run

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I was woken up at a little before 7:00 AM this morning to the sound of an explosion. Linette pushed me out of bed, telling me to check on Clementine. She was sure, given the ferocity of the blast, that a tree had fallen across the back of our house, and she was fearing the worst. As I started to tell her that I thought the sound had come from in front of the house, the yelling started. What sounded like a young woman was screaming, “I didn’t mean to do it.” I looked out the window and saw her. I think she had on a yellow shirt, but I can’t be sure now. Our next door neighbor, Adam, was approaching her, sizing up the damage. I think he was barefoot. I was watching them as I was pulling on my pants. From the looks of it, she’d slammed her silver Dodge Stratus right into the side of my car, which had been parked in the street, right on front the house. It looked like our two cars were nuzzling up to one another, only mine had ben thrust a few feet up onto the curb. By and made it outside, the woman was gone. The plate on her car was gone too.

I asked Adam where she’d gone, and he said that she’d run off. He also said that there was another woman in the car as well, and two kids in the backseat. Even though the air bags had deployed, he said that they’d all seemed fine. When I asked him about the missing license plate, he said he couldn’t remember whether or not there was one on the car when he first came out. He did say, however, that the two women were doing something at the back of the car just after they got out. [This must have happened as I was making my way down the stairs.] The police officer who came to write up the report seemed to think that the they might have taken the plate off to buy them some time as they ran home to report the car stolen. He told me that, usually, when there’s a hit and run like this, they get a call shortly afterward from the car’s owner reporting the car as stolen. When he ran the VIN number, though, it came back showing the owner as a 19 year old white guy, so maybe that’s not what happened. [Both the women in the car, according to my neighbor, were black women in their 30s.] I suppose it’s possible that the 19 year old owner of the car was a boyfriend or something, but it doesn’t really explain why they’d remove the plate and run away before I made it downstairs and the cops arrived. And, if the car was stolen, it doesn’t really explain why they’d remove the plate before running off. I suppose maybe it’s possible that they’d put a plate on a stolen car, and they wanted to take it, as it might somehow lead authorities back to them, but who knows.

I don’t guess it really matters what happened. I’m just curious. I know I should just be happy that we weren’t in the car at the time, as we might have been, had this not be spring break. Any other Friday morning at 7:00 AM, Clementine and I would have been out there, getting in the car, preparing to head to school… It’s funny. I’d been complaining about spring break just the night before, saying that I wish she’d had school this week. If she had, though, I might have just been chopped in half by a stolen Dodge Stratus, as it hit right at the driver’s side door.

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7 Comments

  1. Westside
    Posted April 9, 2016 at 7:25 am | Permalink

    Is this where the seed bombing, the commons and the knapweed removal all happened?

  2. Posted April 9, 2016 at 8:24 am | Permalink

    No, this is where two cars that look very much alike attempted to mate.

  3. Posted April 9, 2016 at 12:52 pm | Permalink

    I’m glad you are okay. Sorry about the car :( Keep us posted on the case, please.

  4. Lynne
    Posted April 9, 2016 at 4:46 pm | Permalink

    I hope they catch these ladies!

  5. Max
    Posted April 11, 2016 at 9:37 am | Permalink

    I love Ypsi, but it can be a strange place sometimes. Two winters ago my wife ventured out during a light snow storm and was driving down Congress heading towards downtown from Normal Park and had just passed through the intersection at Normal and Congress when a car blew a stop sign and pulled out in front of her. She hit the car as it was snowing and couldn’t stop. She was a bit shaken up as our two-year-old was in the backseat. She called me immediately and my first though was watch the people in the other car, so I told her to do that for fear they might run. She said I was crazy…until she looked up and they were gone. The cops got there and began rifling through the car, I guess you give up your rights when you vacate the scene, and they found out that the car was a rental with all of the paperwork in the glove box. I’m sure it was ‘reported stolen’. We ended up getting our deductible back which was nice!

  6. Posted April 23, 2016 at 9:32 pm | Permalink

    I got an odd call from Allstate on Friday. They wanted to know if I’d talked with the woman who hit my car. She’d apparently filed a claim, and he wanted to call her insurance company and coordinate. When I told him that I hadn’t seen them, as they ran off immediately, he told me that I must be wrong. An ambulance came to take her away from the scene of the accident, he said. I told him that was impossible, as my neighbor had seen them take off on foot. “There’s no way an ambulance came,” I told him. “I was dressed and downstairs in three minutes of hearing the crash, and they were gone, and there wasn’t any sign of an ambulance.” So I’m not sure what’s going on. I suppose it’s possible that one of the women, later that morning, after running away from the scene of the accident, decided that she’d better get checked out, but who knows, it could just be that she’s trying to get something out of the insurance company.

  7. Lynne
    Posted April 24, 2016 at 10:16 pm | Permalink

    How injured could she have been? Did you call the police? They might be interested.

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