Around 7:30 p.m. on January 17, Daryl Willmore of Orlando, Florida was jogging one of his typical routes. It was dark out, so Willmore made sure to wear bright reflectors so that drivers noticed him.
But as he was legally crossing an intersection, a driver abruptly took a left turn, hitting Willmore. Willmore crawled to the curb on the side of the street as the car fled the scene.
“I felt like no one was helping,” Willmore told Fox 35 Orlando. “There was another vehicle that witnessed it. They turned, they left.”
Luckily, he did not need immediate medical attention. But Willmore still called the local police, who forwarded his call to the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP). The FHP told him that an officer could not get to the scene for several hours. Willmore said he called six times for help.
An FHP officer finally arrived at 1 a.m., over five hours after the accident, and told Willmore there was nothing they could do without a license plate number.
FHP Lieutenant Channing Taylor explained their protocol to Fox 35 Orlando: “We take serious calls first. The life-threatening calls, the ones blocking the road. But, crashes that have no suspect information and have no injuries, unfortunately, those have to wait a little longer. If we had 100 people on duty that night, we wouldn’t have the wait. Our goal is not to make people wait. We don’t want people to wait.”
Willmore shared surveillance footage on his Instagram, asking for information from anyone who might recognize the vehicle.
Chris Hatler is the Deputy Editor of Esquire. He previously served as the Senior Editor of Men’s Journal and Features Editor of Popular Mechanics.
