Hit-Run Accident Brings 54-Year Marriage to Fatal End

Maxwell and Tony Scott-Hamilton had struggled through much during their 54 years of marriage.

They survived the bombing of London during World War II, and he was missing at sea for a while during combat with the Germans.

Even after the English couple came to the United States after the war, moving to Oceanside in 1981, there were some hard times with finances and jobs. Yet they drew ever closer despite the adversity.

Friday was supposed to have been a special day. In the morning, the Scott-Hamiltons took their usual stroll. Later in the day, they were going to pay off the mortgage on their neat suburban house with its large American flag fluttering out front.

Just blocks from that house, while they crossed Douglas Drive at Westport Drive, the 78-year-old Tony was struck and killed by a car that sped off, leaving her uninjured husband to go on through life alone.

“I looked and she was on the front of the car being taken,” Scott-Hamilton, 77, said hours after the 7:15 a.m. tragedy. “He just kept right on going, he did not stop once.”

As Tony Scott-Hamilton lay dead, two construction workers who saw the accident sped after the suspect in their tar truck, pulling a little trailer carrying a steaming pot of tar.

“We whipped it around and chased him,” said Chuck Long, 29, who had been on his way to work with his 30-year-old partner, Francisco Maldonodo. The suspect, driving a 1983 Ford Escort, pulled into a dead-end street, and the tar truck followed.

“We pulled in front of him and waved and yelled, ‘Go back, man, you’re busted!’ ” Long said. The suspect, Ricardo Santillan, 23, of Oceanside, returned to the scene, where he was arrested. He was later booked into County Jail in Vista on suspicion of felony vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run driving, according to Oceanside police.

Maxwell Scott-Hamilton said he’s grateful for what Long and Maldonodo did, but it is difficult for him to accept having escaped while his wife was killed just feet away. “That’s what hurts the most. I wish it had been me,” he said.

He recounted that, as he crossed Douglas Drive, he saw the approaching vehicle, “but it was quite a way down.” He hastened his wife to follow, but she tarried and was hit.

Construction worker Long said, “The last thing I saw, was he (Scott-Hamilton) was waving his hand to her, like ‘Come on! Come on!’ ”

Afterward, neighbors gathered on their lawns.

“They were a wonderful couple, lovely,” George Banham said.

Rod Hamilton of San Diego, the couple’s son, said it was a terrible thing to happen to people who had already been through so much in their lives.

He said his father served aboard a torpedo boat as a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy during World War II. “They’d been bombed out of London and lost everything,” he said. Later, during the fighting, “My father was lost at sea. My mother never gave up hope.”

In the Scott-Hamilton home are family photographs on living-room walls, navy mementos, campaign medals and a sword, in the den. According to Rod Hamilton, his father worked in real estate and in the aerospace industry.

“Today was the day they were going to be paying off the mortgage on the house,” he said.

A police statement didn’t indicate whether there was evidence that Santillan had been using drugs or alcohol. Police also provided no occupation for Santillan.