Hit-and-run case remains open
BOISE – Julia Wayment knows that someone, somewhere, knows who killed her son last March – at least the person who ran over Shawn Dalhover in Boise’s North End and kept driving.
“They must be consumed by guilt,” Wayment said. “They must want to unburden themselves.
“We don’t want retaliation or revenge. What we do want is answers.”
“I would love to solve this for Julia and her family,” said Boise police Detective Nick Duggan, who has sorted through dozens of tips and followed leads as far away as Moscow trying to find the driver. “We are at a dead end here – and it’s almost been a year.”
“It feels like it just happened yesterday,” Wayment said. “But when I think about how long it has been since I have seen him or hugged him, it feels like an eternity.”
Dalhover, 29, was walking home around 3:25 a.m. March 18 after celebrating St. Patrick’s Day at Pengilly’s Saloon. Dalhover was trying to cross Idaho Street near 15th Street when he was struck by a dark-colored Volkswagen coupe.
Two eyewitnesses told police they saw the car hit Dalhover and keep going. Those people stopped their car to help the badly injured and bleeding Dalhover, police say, and were not able to get a license plate number.
But there was some debris on the ground from the car. Investigators were able to determine it was a Volkswagen Passat, built between 1998 and 2001, with damage to the front end and windshield.
The case was publicized in local media. Dalhover was in a coma for a little more than a week before he died from injuries he sustained in the accident. Several dozen tips poured in, including 22 through Crime Stoppers, the anonymous phone tip line.
“We checked every one of those out,” said Duggan, the lead detective in the case. “We have checked out local (auto) repair shops, the (Volkswagen) parts wholesaler in Washington.”
Detectives traveled as far as Moscow and Victor, a small Idaho town on the Wyoming border. But none of those leads ever panned out. Now, almost a year later, detectives find themselves in the same position they were last spring and are asking the public for help.
“If anyone has information, we really want to hear from them,” Duggan said.
The 29-year-old Dalhover was a free spirit who was well known in the bicycling community after working at Capitol Schwinn Sports on Vista Avenue. He is survived by one brother and four sisters, a girl- friend, a pit bull-terrier mix named Eme, and lots of friends, she said.
Wayment hopes that whoever hit her son might be more compelled to come forward if he or she thinks about him as a person and what he meant to others instead of worrying about him- or herself.
Dalhover’s family has worked hard to not dwell on anger.
“That would create feelings we don’t want,” Wayment said. “I just hope if anyone out there knows something, they call police. I feel I need to do this for my son.”