AP
Last updated: 4:22 pm
June 27, 2008
Posted: 12:00 am
June 4, 2008
HARTFORD, Conn. -- The surveillance video is gripping - a 78-year-old man is tossed like a rag doll by a hit-and-run driver, and car after car zooms by as he lies motionless on the busy city street.
Pedestrians gawk but do nothing. One driver stops briefly but then pulls back into traffic. A man on a scooter slowly circles the victim before zipping away.
Police say the video holds a sad truth about Connecticut's capital city.
"At the end of the day we've got to look at ourselves and understand that our moral values have now changed." Police Chief Daryl Roberts said. "We have no regard for each other."
Police released the May 30 video on Wednesday, hoping that it will lead to an arrest. The victim, Angel Arce Torres, was in critical condition in Hartford Hospital. Authorities say he is paralyzed.
"My father is fighting for his life," said Torres' son, Angel Arce. "I would like the public right now to help us in identifying the car and the person that did this."
The police surveillance video was taken at 5:45 p.m. May 30 in a busy Hispanic working class neighborhood a few blocks south of the state Capitol.
It shows Torres, who was walking in the street after buying milk at a local grocery, being struck by a dark Honda that was chasing a tan Toyota. Both cars dart down a side street as Torres crumples onto the road.
The minute-long video shows several cars passing Torres as a few people stare from the sidewalk. Some approached Torres but most stayed put until a police cruiser responding to an unrelated call arrives on the scene.
Robert Luna, who works at a nearby store, blamed witnesses for failing to help Torres. "It took too long to call police," he said Thursday. "Nobody did nothing."
Witness Bryant Hayre said he didn't feel comfortable helping Torres, who he said was bleeding and conscious.
"Whoever did this should be sent away for a long time," Hayre told The Hartford Courant. "It was as if he was a dog left in the street to die."
Roberts said the hit-and-run is the latest in a string of incidents that show the callousness of this city of 125,000. On Wednesday, authorities discovered a badly decomposed body of a man in the basement of his family's foreclosed home after he had gone missing for months. On Monday, former Deputy Mayor Nicholas Carbone, 71, was beaten and robbed while walking to breakfast.
"There was a time they would have helped that man across the street. Now they mug and assault him," Roberts said. "That's not a police problem. We no longer have a moral compass. Anything goes."
