Peggy Brown, the driver that left Jeff Wicks mangled on the side of the road on June 14th 2014, received her slap on the wrist today; 4 years supervised probation, 320 hours community served at 80 hours per year and a $3000.00 fine. The status of her drivers license was not mentioned. About 30 cyclists, including Olympic medalist Georgia Gould, were in the courtroom to show support for Jeff and his wife Kerry.
Sorry for my lack of impartial reporting here but I feel that someone who showed no intention of rendering aid or even turning herself in, deserves some sort of punishment, she needs to be at least inconvenienced in some way. Not only does the felon need to be punished but the community needs to see that if you hit a cyclist, you better stop and render aid. This sentence does neither.
As an apparently financially secure, generally law abiding retiree, no part of the sentence will really be any sort of inconvenience. Since she doesn’t have a criminal history, being forced to behave herself on probation for 4 years will be no issue. Since she’s retired, she’ll be able to polish of 320 hours of community service very easily and regardless of her financial situation (she was able to buy a new car to replace her Mazda) she could charge the $3000.00 fine to a credit card and pay it off at 50.00 a month, with little to no impact to her lifestyle.
The fact is, after she hit Jeff, she drove away from Jeff laying in the middle of the road, TWICE, stopped to check the damage on her car and still continued to flee. If it weren’t for a witness following her and calling the police, we may never have found out who hit Jeff.
Not only does this sentence fail to punish her, it tells the community that if you’re involved in an collision with a cyclist, you might as well try to get away because there wont be any real punishment in the event that you’re caught.
