The horror and sadness had, less than 24 hours later, turned to outrage. As is proper.
Who commits such an unspeakable act?
It was the question on everyone’s lips on that street corner, from detectives to folks in the neighborhood who volunteered to knock on doors.
Once again, there was a pedestrian-vs.-automobile hit-and-run.
Once again, we are forced to ponder what most of us cannot fathom: a human crunched beneath a car’s tires, the subhuman driving that car not slowing, certainly not stopping.
I will ask it again: How does a person do that?
Laura Gorham, a 27-year-old expectant mother, was walking east in the intersection of East 29th Avenue and Central Park Boulevard in Stapleton at about 5 p.m. Thursday when a dark- colored sport utility vehicle or pickup hit her.
Detectives said the impact sent her flying. A resident discovered her 10 or 15 seconds later moaning in the street.
Her unborn child, a boy, died an hour later at Denver Health Medical Center, where doctors delivered him.
The next day, more than a dozen residents volunteered to fan out, knocking on doors and asking people if they had seen anything.
“It hits close to home,” said Julie Cameron, a volunteer. “What happened is so horrible. It’s tragic, and we want to do what we can to help.”
Denver police Sgt. Brian Conover of the traffic-investigation bureau was still knocking on doors when I caught up with him.
He’d seen a lot of things, he said. Maybe it was the young woman involved. Certainly it was the baby’s death. This one, it seemed, got to him.
He was knocking on doors because he knows what it takes to catch a hit-and-run driver.
He supervises 12 detectives, and every year they investigate about 4,000 hit-and-runs, he said.
Those are just the incidents on which his detectives are called. Triple that number across the city, he said, if you take into account those on which a detective is not dispatched.
Of those 4,000 cases, his detectives solve at least 80 percent.
“They do a hell of a job,” Conover said.
They succeed mostly because someone got a license plate, there were good witnesses or it happened in a parking lot monitored by video cameras, he said.
Very few of the 4,000 cases involve pedestrians hit by an automobile. It explains why on this afternoon, East 29th Avenue is choked with police cruisers, officers and volunteers.
I wanted to know if he could answer the question.
“Most, when we catch them, say they were just scared,” he said. “Others had revoked licenses or were worried they didn’t have the proper insurance.”
This one is tough, he said, because evidence left on the street is minimal. It also explains the flier: Crime Stoppers is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
“We really rely on the public to help in cases like these,” Conover said, excusing himself to take a call. When I start to walk away, he stops me.
“How does a person do this and go to sleep at night?” he asks before returning to his call.
Minutes later, I drive past a teenage boy, who is lying sprawled in the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Holly Street, a team of paramedics feverishly working over him.
A car had hit him.
And yes, the driver stopped.
It is not a difficult thing to do.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
