http://www.statesman.com/news/news/crim … -in/nh2tm/

Defendant
EGGENBERGER MICHAEL JOSEPH

Attorney
HOOD LESTER L

Cause
D-1-DC-12-300233

Setting Date/Time
7/12/12 09:00

Court
299TH

Floor
8

Type
UDS

Charge
FAIL TO STOP AND RENDER AID

Any idea about the percentage of hit and run/failure to render aid cases where charges were actually filed and ended up sticking?

Not exactly, but back during the years when I tried to track serious car/bike collisions, I found that about half the cases were hit-and-runs (!), prosecution wasn't a given, and that even when there was prosecution, significant penalty wasn't a given.  Poke through these:

No justice for cyclists
List of cases
Why no justice?

Unfortunately in Austin, the majority of voters still do not consider killing someone with a vehicle as an homicide; not even an unintentional homicide. For the majority of Austinites people not in cars are not real people.

Austin is a very "progressive" city that does not give sidewalks to their pedestrians and is slowly painting bike lanes after years and years of advocacy work from the community.

In such environment, killing a cyclist or a pedestrian will hardly be prosecuted and APD won't even investigate, or do so half-heartedly. So when someone turns himself in it is the only chance to have some degree of clarification of the who did it and the how it happened.

Almost a year ago Andrew Runciman was murdered and abandoned on South Lamar, we are still waiting for Acevedo's APD to find the murderer.

I've heard of many motorists not even being charged in instances such as this one, so maybe the fact that he is being charged means that some pretty damning evidence can be brought up against him.

Any idea about the percentage of hit and run/failure to render aid cases where charges were actually filed and ended up sticking?

uh huh. "black blob"

Best description yet of how peds and cyclists look to a drunk driver. Be careful out there.

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/aus … 42113.html

According to the Statesman:

* The driver actually turned himself in the day after the media publicized the collision, which itself was a few days after the crash, which accounts for the delay.
* It's unclear whether the cyclist was walking the bike or riding it.
* Maximum penalty is up to 10 years.

According to the driver's affadavit, the day after the collision he "became concerned that he may have been responsible".  Yeah, the exact same time, the exact same location, and the exact same color, make, and model of vehicle, *AND* he knows he hit something, and it seems he's *wondering*, "Huh, could that have maybe been me?"

I'm betting he won't do any time in jail.  Whether or not he gets any jail, it would be great if they simply took his driver's license away for life.  However, since the code lists only fine or jail as penalties, that won't happen.  I wish license revocation were explicitly listed in the code as a possibility for punishment.

(After thinking about this) But, maybe they could interrogate the motorist and get him to confess to seeing the hit cyclist. How long did he look? Where was the debris relative to the road? Why did he wait so long to come to the police and why through a lawyer? Is there any evidence that he purposely cleaned blood off of his truck? Where is this evidence?

Questions hopefully detectives and prosecutors are asking if they actually give a damn.

An Austin man has been charged in a fatal collision in Northwest Austin last week that left 25-year-old Justin Patrick Murphy dead. Michael Joseph Eggenberger, 31, is charged with failure to stop and render aid, a felony. Officers said Murphy was walking his bicycle in the northbound service road of U.S. 183 near McNeil Drive the night he died. Relatives said Murphy would often call his girlfriend during the five-mile trek home from his Apple Inc. job. On Jan. 23rd, about 10:30 p.m., Murphy's girlfriend said the phone suddenly went dead, his family said. She and relatives searched for him until they received word that he was killed. Austin police connected the hit-and-run to a Ford F150, an arrest affidavit said. Eggenberger came forward through his attorney Thursday, the affidavit. Travis County jail records show his bail is $25,000; Eggenberger was not in custody this morning.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/ … al_hi.html

Story was just updated to include this explanation:

Eggenberger told police he was driving his sister's vehicle, a Ford F150, home from downtown Austin the night of the fatal crash.

Eggenberger said "he came to an immediate stop after the collision and that he looked back to see what he had hit," the affidavit said. He then told police "he saw nothing in the roadway, so he drove to a nearby parking lot to examine the damage under better lighting."

Seeing no blood or hair on his vehicle, Eggenberger said he "assumed he did not collide with a person," it said.

The following day, he saw media coverage on the crash the next day and "became concerned he may have been responsible," the affidavit said.

Also, he was 25 years old and going home from his job at Apple.  That hits home, because I worked at Apple when I was 25, and biked home every day.

In related news, a suspect in a hit-and-run pedestrian fatality in NYC has been arrested:  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/s … -1.1001241

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/pic … 28427.html