Hit and [unsuccessful] run

I got on a rather gruesome tack yesterday after reading the most recent news account of a person being hit by a car and dragged from the scene when the driver didn't stop. Memories surfaced about other gruesome cases of bodies driven home in grills and windshields, and I soon amassed almost a dozen accounts that I am compelled to share with you here in reverse chronogical order.

12/3/09: At 1 o'clock in the morning in Los Angeles, the female driver of a Cadillac limousine (pictured) struck and killed a woman with whom she had been in a drug dispute. With the body still under the car, the driver dragged it down Skid Row, through the Theater District, and past the Central Division police department - a distance of about a mile.

8/27/09: The driver of an SUV struck a motorcycle in Clermont, Florida. The driver fled, leaving a local man seriously injured at the scene and dragging his passenger - a British woman - several hundred feet.

3/2/09: Police in San Jose, California, found the body of a pedestrian on a highway on-ramp. The victim of a hit-and-run had been killed on a local street and dragged 1/2-mile to the interstate, where it (gender unidentified) was run over by a few more vehicles.

2/11/09: A driver accidentally hooked the body of a man beneath his van after the victim had been hit by a Ford 2 cars ahead. The van driver had travelled for an hour over almost 20 miles of busy New York City roads before a bystander pointed out the grisly cargo.

8/3/08: A man in Delta, British Columbia, Canada, hit someone on the highway and called police when he returned to the scene and found only a shoe and a jacket. After the accident, a transit bus had swerved to avoid something in the road and inadvertently snagged the victim's body, dragging it 3 miles. With several passengers aboard, the bus driver felt something was wrong with the vehicle and pulled into a rest stop, where he found the unidentified male victim trapped under the bus.

8/25/07: A drunk driver pulled out of a parking lot in Perris, California, and cut off a motorcycle travelling 80mph. The impact with the car threw the motorcyclist through the year window, but instead of stopping, the driver dropped a passenger off at his home, then drove to a fire station to notify authorities. He was sentenced in January of this year to 15 years in prison.

10/19/05: A 93-year-old man fatally struck a pedestrian in St. Petersburg, Florida, and continued driving, stopping at a tollbooth 3 miles down the road. The attendant called police to tell them that the victim was stuck in the windshield of the car and the driver appeared unaware.

2/29/04: Josuel Galdino suspected he had hit a man who was changing a tire in Springfield, Virginia, but he and his passenger continued 8 miles down I-95 with the man pinned beneath the vehicle and being dragged face-down. Galdino called police at 6am and they found the body in the parking lot of his home. During the October 2004 trial, forensic scientists testified that the impact had killed the victim and the judge handed down a sentence of 16 months.

7/4/03: A man wearing dark clothing was crossing the road at about midnight near a bar in DeLeon, Florida. Patrons of the bar called police when 2 severed legs were found near the parking lot. Police soon heard from the man who had struck the pedestrian, then driven the mile to his house with his legless body through the windshield because he did not have a cell phone with him to report the accident.

8/26/01: Driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, Chante Mallard of Fort Worth, Texas, hit a homeless man so hard that the force sent him through the windshield. With his body lodged in the glass, Mallard drove home and parked the car in the garage, without seeking medical help for the victim - who did not die until several hours later - and did not notify police. Instead, she sought help to dump the body in the park, where it was found the next day. Two years later, Mallard received a 50-year prison sentence for murder and tampering with evidence.

These fatatalities are horrible enough to read, but the case of Chante Mallard was made into a movie, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007.