Hit-and-Run : Social, Cultural Factors Cited in Rise of Cases

George Edward Morary died on a late summer evening while crossing a La Habra street. The 25-year-old auto mechanic was walking a friend’s dog back home when he was hit. “It was dusk. A witness said the driver had no lights on,” said his father, George Frank Morary.

Afterwards, he said, “she took off.”

Hit-and-run, a factor in 9% of accidents in California, has become more common this year, according to the California Highway Patrol. During the last five weeks alone, hit-and-run drivers in Orange County have killed six people, including Morary. Three more were seriously injured.

“There are more people driving, less room to drive, and everybody’s still in the same rush to get there,” said Michael Lundquist, a CHP spokesman in Santa Ana.

In urban areas like Orange County, where residents often don’t know their neighbors, drivers may be less likely to feel the moral obligation to stop after an accident. “It happens more often in cities than in rural areas because of the anonymity,” said Gilbert Geis, a UCI professor of social ecology. “It’s no revelation that society’s becoming more selfish all the time.”

Geis, who has studied the opposite trend--the phenomenon of good Samaritanism, said there has never been much research into hit-and-run because of the belief that “there isn’t anything you can do about it.”

The state vehicle code requires any driver involved in any accident to remain at the scene. Further, the code requires drivers to lend assistance to anyone who is injured until medical personnel arrive. Beyond the penalty for whatever injuries they cause, judges can sentence drivers to up to a year in jail and a $10,000 fine for fleeing the scene of an accident. Nevertheless, according to the CHP, last year California hit-and-run drivers left 388 people dead--most of them pedestrians. Some 27,006 were left injured.

According to Sgt. Tom Machado of the La Habra Police Department, hit-run drivers flee because of “pure panic” or because “they’re blitzed out of their lid and don’t know what they’re doing.” But most of them, he said, “know they’re in deep trouble.”

Other reasons are that the drivers have no license, no insurance, or fear higher insurance rates or being caught violating a drunk-driving parole, Lundquist said. Some say they were unaware that they had even been involved in an accident, he said.

“I can understand the impulse to get the hell out of there,” UCI’s Geis said. If the victim has died, “what’s the point of staying and going to prison?

“Running away always aggravates what you’ve done, but it gives you the chance to not pay any price for it.”

Most of those arrested for hit-and-run driving--whether injuries are involved or not--are men, according to the Bureau of Criminal Statistics. Of the 1,440 adults arrested statewide last year, 617 were Latino, 602 white and 162 black.

Santa Ana Police Capt. Paul Walters said the number of Latinos arrested may be disproportionately high because of their confusion over California law. In Mexico, he said, it is more common to flee the scene of an accident because all drivers involved are often taken into custody until the financial responsibility can be settled. Also, Walters said, some Latinos falsely believe that the state allows them to leave and contact an attorney.

Walters said several education programs through television, radio and Spanish newspapers are aimed at improving immigrants’ knowledge of California laws.

Geis said that hit-and-run is an inadvertent crime and the first impulse is to make believe it didn’t happen.

“It really spooks you. (They think) ‘Ten minutes ago my life was simple. Now I’m a murderer. What can I do?’ ”

Although the “moral imperative” is to stop and help the victim, Geis noted that the Fifth Amendment protects people from incriminating themselves. “Why should (running away) be an offense at all? It’s a fascinating constitutional issue,” he said.

When police catch up with suspects in hit-and-run cases, many deny their involvement, Lundquist said.

“I get neat stories. They simply weren’t driving, not involved. I say, ‘Can you tell me who was driving?’ They say, ‘No, I just leave my keys here and there.’ I look at them and see a visible injury to their face. They say, ‘Well, I got in a fight that night.’ But they can’t tell me anything about the guy.

“Sometimes I tell them flat out, ‘I know you’re lying. If you want to come in and change your statement, fine.’ ”

In drunk-driving cases, offenders will sometimes turn themselves in, Lundquist said. They admit that they were drinking but claim that it was after the accident and that they only drove away because they were so upset.

In fact, 75% of hit-and-run cases do escape criminal charges because in most cases no one can identify the driver, Lundquist said.

However, authorities eventually trace 90% of the cars involved in hit-and-run accidents, he said, mainly through information from witnesses. The owners can then be held liable for damages in civil suits.

Forensic technology has increased the chance of pinpointing who was behind the wheel in a hit-and-run case. Using powerful electron microscopes and equipment that analyzes organic structure, criminalists can determine the make, model and year of a car or whether it was repainted from just a tiny paint chip found at the scene, said Frank Fitzpatrick, chief criminalist for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

When details of the car and damage are widely publicized, the suspected car “sticks out like a sore thumb,” he said. Fitzpatrick said that sometimes body shops blow the whistle on owners who bring in damaged cars that match the description of wanted vehicles.

In cases where there is damage to the inside of the car, traces of blood and hair can also be analyzed to determine who was behind the wheel, Fitzpatrick said.

In cases in which the driver is never found, victims don’t know whom to blame. Because they can’t direct their anger, they often blame themselves, said Arturo Perez, an administrator with the Victim Witness Program in Los Angeles. “Not knowing leads many to wonder what they did wrong. Were they crossing the street when they shouldn’t?”

Such victims may also be liable for some or all of their own expenses. However, the state will pay up to $46,000 in medical bills, lost wages or out-of-pocket insurance costs to eligible victims through the state victims fund created under the Victims of Crime Act.

Until recently, the state argued against reimbursing pedestrian victims of hit-and-run if they were not in a crosswalk, Perez said. “We kept arguing the victim is not guilty, that it’s not the victim’s fault that the guy ran. They changed their policy and now don’t take that into consideration,” he said.

George Frank Morary had two sons. The other recently married and moved away from home. “Now we have a big house with two bedrooms empty. There’s a big void in our house now,” he said.

He said that George Edward, his older son, didn’t have a steady girlfriend. He lived from payday to payday. “He never really lived, never had a chance to get married or have a family. It deprived him of his everything.”

Because of the witness, the driver of the car was stopped before leaving the city limits, he said. A hearing for the woman arrested in the case is scheduled for October.

Morary said he realizes it was an accident. “But I think I would feel better if she had stopped.”

“I’m not a real bitter person,” he said. “It just hurts.”

‘It happens more often in cities than in rural areas because of the anonymity.’--UCI professor Gilbert Geis