NEW ORLEANS — Tuesday morning a father received a scary call. His 21-year-old daughter told him she had been the victim of a hit-and-run while driving on the interstate from Slidell to her summer internship in New Orleans while she's home from college.
Roger Glynn said it happened around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday while she was approaching the high rise on I-10.
"She slammed on her brakes, she stopped and did not hit the car in front of her but the car behind her hit her. So she did the right thing, she got out the lane of traffic and moved onto the left shoulder. When she did that, the car instead of moving over with her, took off making it a hit-and-run" Glynn said. "She was petrified and scared. She called 911 to get police out there."
After calling 911, she received a text message to share her location so she did. Someone from the Department of Transportation and Development helped her move then waited with her.
"He said, ‘Let’s get off the interstate,’ the first place to get off was Chef Highway. Not exactly the safest area in the world," Glynn said.
Police still had not showed up and the DOTD worker warned response time can be delayed.
"He told us flat out he didn’t think it was enough damage for us to do any kind of incident report and certainly not to wait for the police. I said, 'why not wait for the police?' and he said it would take three or four hours for police to get here," Glynn said. "I just shook my head. I couldn’t believe a hit-and-run accident on the interstate, that seems serious enough to me, you'd want to get someone out there in a hurry."
Glynn said they left about an hour after the accident. The car was drivable.
According to the 911 call logs, a hit-and-run was called in at 8:29 a.m. Police were dispatched at 10:06 p.m. and arrived at 1:02 the next morning, 16 hours after Glynn's daughter called police. The disposition says, 'Gone on Arrival.'
"How are you expected to wait around 14, 17, 19 hours for the police to get there to fill out a report? That’s insane and I don’t want to hear the excuse - ‘there is not enough manpower.’ Fix it. Fix it. To expect a 21-year-old girl to sit on the side of the interstate or Chef Highway for 14 hours is unacceptable," Glynn said.
As Eyewitness Investigator Mike Perlstein revealed in an investigation last month, the Seventh District, which covers New Orleans East, has had the most police calls this year and the police response time to those calls has been the longest, an average of more than three and a half hours.
Glynn's daughter was not hurt and her car only has minor damages. She did not get the license plate to the driver who allegedly hit her.
We reached out to NOPD who said they are looking into the incident and response times. NOPD said they recommend if you must leave the scene of an accident, call 911 to provide the reason why and share the new location and contact number so officers can contact you.