A 60-year-old Santa Rosa man will spend six months in the Sonoma County jail for fatally striking a 64-year-old Pacifica pedestrian last February. Authorities say that the accident happened around 1 p.m. on Feb. 27 on the 4600 block of Montgomery Road.
The driver hit the pedestrian from behind and then fled the scene. ABC News reports that the driver left the man to die on the side of the road and waited over two days after the pedestrian accident to turn himself in.
Family members of the deceased pedestrian are angered by the driver’s insistence that he did not know that he struck a person. Deputy District Attorney Robert Waner characterized the motorist’s repeated denials as “offensive” and “confounding.”
“There’s nothing to suggest he could not have known he hit someone,” Waner said.
The 16-year-old son of the pedestrian wrote a letter to the court detailing his grief. The teen also wrote that he is mentally and emotionally exhausted from lack of sleep.
The man was convicted of felony hit-and-run and misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence. The man recently pleaded no contest to the charges.
Source: KGO-TV, “Hit-and-run driver sentenced for pedestrian’s death in Santa Rosa,” June 5, 2013
