Motorists Ignore Plea of Hit-and-Run Victim

A 32-year-old Laguna Hills woman, the victim of a hit-and-run accident on Interstate 5 in El Toro Monday night, said she stood on the freeway covered with blood and waved her arms at oncoming traffic for about 10 minutes but no passing motorist stopped to help.

Cynthia Marcari said Tuesday that the accident occurred at 8:30 p.m. Monday while she was traveling north on Interstate 5 near the Lake Forest Drive exit. She said her pale yellow 1979 Alpha Romeo was struck from behind by a large truck and knocked across three lanes of traffic before it slammed into the central guardrail.

After the shock of the collision wore off, Marcari said she looked around but saw no sign of the truck.

“I got out of the car. I was covered with blood, I was screaming and nobody stopped,” she said. “I was waving my arms.”

After about 10 minutes, a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer stopped and summoned help, said Marcari, who underwent plastic surgery for facial cuts and a broken nose at Saddleback Hospital and Health Center in Laguna Hills.

While Marcari was upset that no motorist stopped to help, Ken Daily, a spokesman for the CHP office in San Juan Capistrano, said drivers might not have been able to see that Marcari was hurt.

“You’re zipping along at 65 or 70 like most of them do, and you might not notice anything,” Daily said. Because Marcari’s car was facing oncoming traffic, Marcari would have been silhouetted against her car’s headlights, making it difficult for drivers to see that she was bloodied, he said.

A spokeswoman for the CHP in Santa Ana, which is handling the investigation, is asking any witnesses to the accident to call Officer Rocky Hamilton in the Santa Ana office at (714) 547-8311.