Justice?

Yesterday morning, on my way to work, I was passed by a vehicle traveling very fast. A couple of miles up the road, this vehicle hit a dog. I was just a couple of hundred feet behind the accident. I immediately slowed down and that vehicle pulled over to the shoulder of the road. I continued slowly, debating whether I should go back and try to help. As I was turning around to go back, the vehicle pulled away from the shoulder and drove off. As far as I could tell, the driver didn’t take the time to even go check on the dog. When I arrived back at the dog, she was definitely deceased, but I had to wait for many, many vehicles to pass by before I could get her body off the road. I rang the doorbell of the nearest house, but nobody answered and since I had to get to work, I left without doing anything further. Not until I was 5-6 miles down the road did I think that I should have checked for a collar or tags. Further, not until this time did I remember that I have a cell phone! Of course, though, I couldn’t remember the non-emergency number and I didn’t want to call 9-1-1 for a non-emergency. So I continued into work and called the police department from work. They did say that they had received a couple of other calls and an officer had already gone to get ID on the dog and that the owner’s had been contacted. I gave them a description of the vehicle, but it wasn’t enough for them to do anything with. By the time I passed through on my way home, the dog’s body was gone; I hope the owner’s were able to get some closure.

Now this morning on my way to work, you can be sure my eyes were peeled for this vehicle. It was unique enough that I figured I could pick it out if I saw it again, plus I knew that the license plate began with a “B”. Sure enough, as I approached a stop light at the end of the road, I pulled up behind a vehicle which matched and which had a license plate beginning with “B”. So again, I called the police department when I got into work. I spoke with an officer who said he’d follow up on the case. I’m not sure what can be done after 24 hours, especially since we can’t be absolutely sure that it’s the same vehicle, let alone the same driver. In my own mind though, I would hope that if the person receives a phone call from the police, maybe they’ll realize that at least they should have gone back to check on the dog. How can people hit an animal and drive off?!