'They actually accelerated': Driver runs over, kills leashed dog in crosswalk, flees scene

SEATTLE -- Police are searching for a hit-and-run driver who killed a dog and then sped off.

It happened Sunday as a woman tried to cross a busy East Green Lake Drive with two dogs on a leash.

“This could have been a person, or a child, or a baby,” said Kelly Chaplin, who was walking her dog, and her roommate’s 3-year-old boxer named Hendrix.

“I can see the car approaching so I look at it and stare it down to make sure that they know to stop and they actually accelerated,” she said Tuesday.



Chaplin said even though she had the right of way, the driver of a black car just kept going.

“The next thing I know both dogs are being run over,” she said. “I just lost it, shouting and screaming in the street.”

“It just breaks my heart,” said Jennifer Cournyer, who lives nearby. “I’m glad the woman wasn’t hurt but her poor dog was put down.”

Chaplin and her friends plastered the neighborhood with fliers hoping someone with information would call police, but by Tuesday morning they were all gone.

“Someone has apparently taken them down -- all 100 of the fliers,” said Ann Polin, whose daughter owns Hendrix.

Cournyer said she watched a stranger remove the fliers, and most of Hendrix’s memorial, before sunrise on Tuesday.

“A gentleman walking around and just taking down all the posters, all of them on both sides of the street,” she said.

The Seattle Department of Transportation said there have been only two injuries out of 13 collisions at the intersection of East Green Lake Drive and Wallingford Avenue North since 2009. But neighbors said the roadway and crosswalk are dangerous, and better signing could help warn drivers.

Now, neighbors are hoping the driver who ran over the dogs does the right thing and turns himself in to police.

“How hard is it to take your dog running and bring him back alive?” said Chaplin, “I feel really, really sad.”

Chaplin said she and her roommate were planning to return to the intersection Tuesday night to hang more posters, hoping that someone caught the car’s license plate and will call police.