The young-but-popular car-sharing service Car2Go has helped police track down and arrest a hit and run suspect following a Saturday night collision on Capitol Hill, CHS reports.
The victim and witnesses told police that the person driving a Car2Go turned into and struck the victim while he was riding a bike at Bellevue Ave and E Olive St. The collision sent the victim flying to the ground, cutting his shins badly enough to require a hospital visit.
According to the police report, the person driving the Car2Go—a recognizable blue and white Smart Car—stopped and checked on the victim. As witnesses started to approach the scene, the 28-year-old allegedly “freaked out,” mumbled something about parking the car and drove away, never to return to the scene.
CHS reports that Car2Go located the damaged car, figured out who was driving it at the time, and gave police the suspect’s home address and information. From CHS:
According to an SPD report on the incident, officers were able to track the driver down at his Capitol Hill apartment with help from the car sharing service. Car2Go was able to provide the name and address of the person who had last rented the car reported by the victim and witnesses at the scene of the 8:30 PM incident and also located the vehicle — still checked out to the suspect — at E Thomas and Harvard Ave where it sat with “fresh damage to the front end.” We’ve asked Car2Go for more information about its policies regarding this type of incident but have not yet heard back from the company.
More details from the police report (screenshot from CHS):
Because everyone on the Internet gets silly on April 1, I feel it is important to note that this story is, indeed, real.
Silly because it’s hard to believe someone would be dumb enough to think he could away with that in a Car2Go?
Well, glad to see C2G did the responsible thing!
When I saw the headline, and before I read the article, I thought that it might have gone down like this: someone was hit and run by a car, a witness saw the accident and the car trying to get away, jumped into a Car2Go and caught him. That would have been rather awesome. This is just someone whose thought processes were rather impaired, as Gene suggests. Car2Go is obviously going to know who had the car and the cars are all marked.
Car chases are, generally, really dangerous and emphatically Not Awesome. Even chases involving well-trained police officers are dangerous, which is why one of the things officers are trained in is when to let someone go. We don’t want untrained amateurs chasing people around in Smart cars on Cap Hill.
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