There's a Big Bug on My Windshield

[Joe Guy]

Cops: Drunk Motorist Hit Pedestrian, Kept Driving With Victim "Halfway Through The Vehicle's Windshield"

After striking a pedestrian with his car, a drunk New Jersey man drove for more than a mile with the critically injured victim lodged in the vehicle’s windshield, investigators allege.

Responding to a report Monday of an erratic driver, an Ocean Township Police Department officer spotted an auto “with what appeared to be a person lying on the hood of the vehicle.” A cop initiated a traffic stop around 7 PM and found “a person halfway through the vehicle’s windshield,” according to prosecutors.

A subsequent investigation determined that driver Marcos Ortega, 33, struck the victim when he crossed onto the shoulder on Route 9. Cops estimated that Ortega drove “approximately 1.5 miles” with Kenneth Moeller, 61, lodged in the car’s windshield.

Moeller was extricated from the vehicle by emergency service workers and transported to the Jersey Shore University Medical Center, where he is listed in critical condition.

The “impaired” Ortega was charged with drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident. He was booked into the county jail in lieu of $150,000 bail.

source

[MajGenl.Meade]

Well that second charge of leaving the scene is a bit harsh - he kinda took the accident along with him.

[Lord Jim]

When I read this, I recalled a story from a few years ago where a person did this and actually drove home with the guy stuck in her windshield and parked in her garage...

Here it is:

Man Stuck in Windshield Left to Die

FORT WORTH — A nurse's aide [ ] hit a homeless man with her car, drove home with him stuck headfirst in her broken windshield and ignored his cries for help as he bled to death in her garage over the next two or three days, police say.

Chante Mallard allegedly told police she periodically went into the garage, apologizing to him but doing nothing to help.

Mallard, 25, was arrested Wednesday and was later charged with murder and released on bond. She faces from five years to life in prison and a fine up to $10,000.

"I'm going to have to come up with a new word. 'Indifferent' isn't enough. 'Cruel' isn't enough to say," Tarrant County prosecutor Richard Alpert told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. " 'Heartless'? 'Inhumane'? Maybe we've just redefined inhumanity here."

Police said 37-year-old Gregory Biggs probably would have lived had he received immediate help. When the man finally died, Mallard and her friends put the stranger's body in the trunk of another car and dumped it in a park, authorities said.

Mallard allegedly told police she had been drinking and using the drug Ecstasy the night Biggs was hit. The impact hurled him headfirst through the windshield, leaving his broken legs protruding onto the hood.

With the man lodged in the windshield, the woman panicked and drove a few miles to her Fort Worth home, parked her car in the garage and lowered the door as Biggs pleaded for help, according to police.

When Biggs' body was found Oct. 27, evidence pointed to a hit-and-run, investigators said.

Lt. David Burgess said police were contacted a few weeks ago by someone who said she heard Mallard at a party talking about the incident.

Mallard allegedly told a friend details when asked why she was no longer driving her car.

A search of Mallard's house turned up the damaged car with blood, hair and other evidence, authorities said. The car's seats were found in the backyard, and one had been burned.

Mallard's attorney, Mike Heiskell, said: "I think this is overreaching on the part of the prosecution and the police, and, in the end, I believe the law will shake out that this was simply a case of failure to stop and render aid."

The medical examiner's office said Biggs suffered no internal injuries and apparently died of shock and loss of blood.

Mallard told investigators she went into the garage a few times and apologized to the victim but never called for help as he pleaded with her. She wouldn't say why she wouldn't get help, Burgess said.

http://articles.latimes.com/2002/mar/08/news/mn-31784

[MajGenl.Meade]

...and then there's the whole Wayne Bobbit/bug/windshield joke...

...and oddly enuff:

11/13/2014 John Wayne Bobbitt got cut off again ... and this time he suffered a broken neck. JWB was driving to his brother's house in Buffalo Tuesday when another car ran a red light and T-boned his jeep. John suffered a broken vertebrae in his neck and a slipped disk.
We're told he should fully recover

[BoSoxGal]

LJ, not sure why but that article you copied had the facts wrong in that the man in the windshield died within 2-3 hours of being hit, not 2-3 days - a significant difference in the amount of depraved indifference shown by the woman who hit him, given she was still highly intoxicated.

You'll be happy to hear, however, that she received 50 years prison for that crime, and her boyfriend and cousin who helped her dump the body received 10 years each.

[oldr_n_wsr]

i was driving to Laguardia airport yesterday to pick up my daughter and on the eastbound lanes of the LIE there were cops and emts and a body laying in the road. Read in the paper today that the guy walking into the road and a panel van hit him. Sad really.