The Old Demon: Hit and Run!
Hit and Run
The letter from the sheriff’s department was addressed to me, but I thought little about it. Most physical mail you get these days is marketing trash or junk mail made to look like an important piece of correspondence, but reveals itself to be a come-on.
The letter sat on my desk for a few days before I opened it. When I did, my jaw dropped in shock as I read.
“Dear Mr. Hannah. A car registered in your name was involved in a hit-and-run accident in October 2025. Please contact Detective So-and-So to schedule a time to come down to the station.”
The letter included the license plate of the vehicle, which I recognized as my father’s car. A car he had signed over to me a year prior, as he was not really driving anymore. I agreed to register it and insure it for him. And now this…
My stomach churned at what all this could mean. Once again, the old demon had found a way to interrupt my regularly scheduled life and upend my serenity with thoughts of car wrecks, criminal proceedings, arrest warrants, and prison sentences.
Had my father run someone over? Had he left the scene of an accident? I just couldn’t imagine what he must have been thinking. Had his cognitive decline finally reached a point where he couldn’t remember a hit-and-run accident?
I immediately called the detective assigned to the case and left her a message. I gave her a basic rundown of my understanding of the situation, which wasn’t much, and asked her to call me back.
I then checked the web for what to do if you receive a hit-and-run letter from the sheriff’s department. Every piece of advice, whether it was an AI summary, a law firm, or a criminal lawyer, said the same thing, and explicitly. “Do not speak to the detective without a lawyer present under any circumstances!”
My heart sank. Of course, I convinced myself the brief, yet vague message I left for the detective would be enough to implicate myself somehow in the entire ordeal. Accessory after the fact! I felt incredibly stupid and vulnerable.
According to California law, the criminal penalty for engaging in a hit-and-run accident could mean six months in jail and a thousand-dollar fine. If a person sustained physical injury or death, the charges get exponentially more serious.
And that’s to say nothing of the civil charges that might pop up for damages, both physical and mental. Punitive damages might be assessed, and I could lose my house. I could lose everything. How did I lose control so quickly?
All because I let the old demon continue to drive his car to the market. Why didn’t I stop him? I had a sneaking suspicion the real reason was that I knew his inability to drive would mean I would be on the hook for the day-to-day chores he needed to complete.
So, in short, all of this was my fault!
My mind reeled with the possibilities, and none of them were good. I wanted to call the old demon and scream at him, but I couldn’t do that until I spoke to the detective to find out exactly what had transpired.
When I calmed down enough to think straight, and the taste of metal that precipitated projectile vomiting subsided, I remembered my father had already told me about this fender bender.
He called me and said he had gotten into an accident in the parking lot of his local supermarket. It was not a high-speed crash, and while he admitted he was at fault, he said the other vehicle had sustained no damage. He further explained that he had told her he had insurance and gave her his contact information.
“She didn’t have any damage to her car,” he said. “My car, now that’s a different story.”
It occurred to me that if she had not sustained damage to her car, she might choose not to contact her insurance carrier. My father wasn’t interested in having his car fixed. There was a chance this would resolve itself if the other driver didn’t need to have her car repaired.
“Dad, you need to tell me right away if that woman tries to call you,” I told him.
“I will,” he answered. “Don’t worry.”
Over the next few days and weeks, I asked the old demon if he had received a call about the car accident. He told me he had not. I didn’t believe he was lying.
That, of course, doesn’t mean she didn’t try. She may have tried numerous times. He just doesn’t answer his phone. Why? Because he doesn’t hear it. He is severely hearing impaired, and half the time I call him, he doesn’t hear the phone. I was living in a fantasy land that somehow this important call about his fender bender would be the one call he would hear and pick up.
The next day, I tried the detective again, and she picked up. Success. I was nervous, but I spoke respectfully and apologetically, throwing myself at the mercy of the court, so to speak.
After a brief exchange, I explained what I knew about the accident and calmly told her what my father had relayed to me. She curtly interrupted me.
“Sir,” she said into the phone twice to get me to stop talking, “that’s not what happened.”
My heart sank again.
“It was not in a parking lot. Your father pulled out onto a major street without looking and was struck by the other car.”
The detective spoke in a very exacting manner. Very matter-of-fact. The breezy, friendly tone of the conversation was gone, replaced now by something altogether more ominous.
“Okay,” I said. “I understand.”
“Also,” she added. “Your father’s driver’s license expired in 2023.”
“Oh,” I responded. “I see.”
I wasn’t even sure how to respond to this information. Do I give them an address where he lives so they can arrest him? Do I stop the call and tell the detective I don’t want to continue without a lawyer present?
Maybe I should just tell them he’s old and doesn’t really know what he is doing. He might be guilty of everything you describe, but isn’t there a way we can make this right?
My father was unaware of the atomic bomb that was going to be dropped in his lap. As far as he was concerned, everything was status quo.
When I finally arrived at his independent living facility, I asked if I could speak with him privately. His girlfriend was in the apartment. She was a sweet woman and had a fiery relationship with the old demon.
When she left, I lowered the boom. My father was incredulous. He simply couldn’t believe this was happening. He was sure this woman had not damaged her car. Well, there was plenty of evidence to the contrary. I explained that the Sheriff’s Department had sent me a letter and that criminal charges were hanging in the balance pending a thorough investigation.
His face read the severity of my words, and I savored that moment, but I have to be honest with you. When you know the person will largely forget what you are saying, it lessens the impact substantially. You end up having to remind them over and over about how much trouble they might be in, and then you become the asshole in the scenario. Unlike someone with short-term memory loss or dementia, his memory failure does not erase conversations from his mind. My father mostly remembers the recent conversations, but unless the subject is in his face all the time, it will happily drift into the back of his mind, where it will eventually wither and die like an old furry tomato in the back of the fridge.
The selfish part of me wanted to impart to him how much stress and turmoil this was putting me through. Me, me, me, me, me! He understood that fact, but an apology was not forthcoming. It was all matter-of-fact information for him to digest — or not.
For example, not once since informing him did he ever pick up the phone or ask me how it was going. It was never on his mind like it was on mine. He would suggest something unrelated, and I would have to remind him. “Well, you know, we still have to resolve the incident with the sheriff.”
“Right,” he would answer. There would be no follow-up questions or updates required on his part. I really wanted to punish him over this situation, but how?
If I couldn’t shame him over the mess he created, there was only one option left, which was to negotiate the pitfalls of criminal and civil charges by stepping up and becoming the lightning rod for my father’s transgressions. The sheriff and the aggrieved party could now load for bear and take aim at yours truly.
The detective correctly surmised that I was not the victim in all of this, but the person left holding the bag. She agreed that because my father had stopped and spoken to the other driver involved in the accident, this was not a hit-and-run. Thank God!
“Listen,” she said. “These people just want somebody to step up and pay for their repairs.”
“That’s me. I’m the guy,” I offered.
“I’m happy to let the insurance companies handle this.”
The detective graciously let it end there. She understood my father should not be driving, and I clarified the car was no longer available to him. I explained I would happily pay for the damages to the other driver’s car, and we could put an end to the issue altogether.
This seemed to satisfy her. Now, it was up to me to get the estimates and make things right.
What I didn’t count on was that the old demon would try to sell the car out from under me. He spoke to someone interested in purchasing the car, and when asked what he was looking for, my father said, “I dunno. Fifty bucks?”
The buyer in question had the good sense to know this was not the price on the car. “Let me call your son,” He said.
When he called, I told him I needed to get as much for the car as I could as I was on the hook for the damages to the other car. Damages my own insurance carrier wouldn’t cover. He understood.
Shortly thereafter, I paid for the repairs on the other person’s vehicle, but the car still sits in my driveway, staring at me, taunting me as a reminder of what thrills and spills may be in my future.