Bonnie Eslinger / The Daily News Rev. Albert Macklin of the New Sweet Home Church of God in Christ in East Palo Alto said he was out walking with his seeing eye dog in East Palo Alto Monday evening when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver. Here, he is seen in his East Palo Alto home on Tuesday.
A blind church pastor said Tuesday he was walking with his seeing eye dog to Starbucks in East Palo Alto the previous evening when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver.
"She stopped and asked me if I was OK, but then took off without waiting for an answer," the Rev. Albert Macklin, 44, said in an interview.
Macklin said he was on Myrtle Street crossing Sparrow Court at about 8 p.m. when a car slowly backing out of a cul-de-sac bumped into him and his guide dog, a black Labrador named Eaton.
"I hollered out, 'you hit me' and I slammed my fist on her trunk to get her to stop," Macklin said.
The driver called out that she was going to pull forward and park her car, but drove away instead.
"I would have thought she would have had the common decency to stop," said Macklin, a pastor at the New Sweet Home Church of God in Christ.
Asked what message he wanted to send the driver, Macklin said: "Come forward and just apologize and let us know who you are. I believe it was wrong for you to drive away. You should have waited to see if I was injured or hurt or if my dog was injured or hurt."
Macklin said he went to the Kaiser Permanente Redwood City Medical Center because he felt soreness in his knees but wasn't otherwise injured by the impact.
He was affected more "emotionally" from the incident, which he said left him feeling less secure about walking alone.
Adding to his frustration, Macklin said he called the police and they declined to write up a report Monday night because there were no witnesses. He only got a response after calling Chief Ron Davis the next morning, he said.
Davis confirmed that a report was not written until Tuesday, but said he was waiting for the officers involved to start their evening shift to determine why not.
"It should have been taken," Davis said in a phone interview. "It's still a crime to hit somebody and leave them there."
Now investigating the case, police are asking the public to identify the driver or the vehicle involved in the collision. Witnesses are asked to contact East Palo Alto police dispatch at 650-321-1112, send an anonymous email to epa@tipnow. org or an anonymous text to 650-409-6792, or leave an anonymous voice mail at 650-409-6792.
Email Bonnie Eslinger at beslinger@dailynewsgroup. com; follow her at twitter.com/bonnieeslinger.
via www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_24116257/minister-walking-seeing-eye-dog-east-palo-alto
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