No Charges Filed on “Hit & Run Trash Truck”
October 19th, 2011 by Joe Burgess
When a resident of Oak View Apartments went to her car, last Wednesday morning, she discovered that it had been hit in the rear, overnight, and the accident was not reported.
When Monticello Police arrived, the investigation led to the discovery that the “hit & run” vehicle was actually a City of Monticello trash truck. Estimates to repair the vehicle came in at around $3,000.
Since a city vehicle was involved, the Drew County Sheriff’s Dept. took over the case.
City truck #116 was identified as the vehicle involved, which was confirmed by paint marks.
It took a couple of days for the city to confirm which of the 2 night crew drivers was driving the truck, but that Eric Lucas later admitted that he had been visiting someone in the apartment complex around 3 am, when the accident may have occurred.
No charges were filed since Lucas claims that he didn’t know he had damaged the Chevy, which sources told DCSO could likely be possible, due to the weights of the vehicles involved.
Choose another article
Newer article: City Losing 47% Revenue Due to Old Water Meters – VIDEO
Older article: Another Local Resident Arrested While Their Home Burns
As a person who has driven a bus or other big trucks, you can run into something and not know you hit it. That is probably what happened in this case but it is called a “hit and run”.
dont ask dont tell ?just a wAY TO LET IT PASS
As I understand it, one driver has run over stuff in the past and is still working there.
How can the city NOT know who the driver was?
Where are the trucks parked? Do they leave the keys in them ? Can anyone off the street get in one of the trucks and go joy riding or hit and running? You don’t have to sign out for these trucks? The trucks were bought with the taxpayers money we would apreciate a little more concern about this. Maybe the city council needs to look into this for the next three years too.
This is yet another cover up for a city employee they know exactly who was driving the truck, just ask Dennis their supervisor. If he doesn’t know then blame him for not doing his job. This is getting ridiculus taxes going up and the city rules the world I bet nothing ever comes of this.
So it is okay for a city employee to use a city vehicle to make personal visits at 3 am? No wonder our taxes are so high! The employee should be fired for personal use of a city vehicle, if not for the accident.
if they got a lawyer and pushed a lawsuit there would be answers!!!! If id owned that vehicle that got hit id have a trash truck and a new car! lol. But really this is a concern for everyone. A city vehicle hit a parked car. I know it might be possible to not know but in this case id say they knew they hit it. Thats why they are tryin to hide the person who was driving. Personally I dare them to hit my vehicle….not a trash truck would run til I got an answer on who hit my vehicle!
The City should at lease make him pay for the repairs on her car.
Just because he didn’t know he hit a parked car doesn’t mean he DIDN’T hit a parked car. The evidence supports this.
So, is the city liable for this damage or not? How the city deals with on-the-job conduct of its employees is a different matter perhaps, but the car owner should be compensated.
Why did it take so long for someone to find out who was driving the dump truck? I would say that this is the Supervisors responsibility and agree with Whatever. Anyone else would be ticketed. And visiting someone at 3:00am in the morning,while on the job? Are our tax dollars still paying this guy? Jus Say’n……
The truck driver has to have at least a class B CDL. Not only the county police needs to involved but so does the DOT. Anytime when a commercial truck is involved in a accident the driver must have drug & alchol test performed. How is it that this driver was not found or owned up to the accident until several days later,HHHHHMMMMMMM. I would have to say that this doesn’t smell good here. I hope the city does the right thing and pay for the car and lets the driver go.