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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Unsolved hit-run death cuts deep


Robb Long poses for a photo with the family dog during the holidays. 
 (Courtesy of Long family / The Spokesman-Review)

Eight weeks after the death of her grandson, two questions haunt Elsie Long.

The first question is “why.” It tears at her chest like a sharp jab of pleurisy, so much so that it dropped the 76-year-old woman to her knees six days ago in the gravel driveway of her Spokane Valley home.

Robb Long died riding his moped home from work June 9. He was riding through a Sprague Avenue intersection beneath Interstate 90 when a driver waiting on a red light in the opposite direction drove up on a concrete median to pass to the front of the line, then raced smack into Robb.

Long’s grandson, 29 years old, didn’t stand a chance. His killer put the pedal to the metal and escaped up an Interstate 90 on-ramp, which is why Long’s second haunting question, the one that keeps her awake at night, is: “Who?”

“They just don’t know what they did to our family,” Long said. “You’d even stop if you hit a dog. Most people would anyway.”

“Most people” were not in the gray, or silver, Dodge Intrepid that killed Robb Long. One witness, stuck in traffic and forced to watch Robb die, told detectives someone in the passenger seat of the Dodge turned around to stare at Robb as the car sped off. It was the only sign of concern anybody saw.

Investigators now believe that as word of the death spread, the people in the Intrepid just kept trying to distance themselves from the crime. An anonymous tipster called Secret Witness, a citizen-managed, reward-driven tip line, and told authorities that two women had offered a mutual acquaintance $50 to hide the Intrepid, believed to be 1998 to 2004 vintage. The tipster also identified by first name the people suspected of being in the car when Robb was killed.

What the source didn’t provide was a name and phone number so investigators could call back and ask more questions. Five weeks later, detectives haven’t heard back from the source.

Spokane Valley Detective Don Manning said he interviewed the girls, suspected of trying to stash the car, but both denied any role. What’s needed now is a call back from the anonymous source or someone who might be able to lead detectives to the Dodge.

“If I can get that witness, or the person who was asked to hide the car to contact me directly, they can remain anonymous,” Manning said. “That’s fine.”

What’s frustrating, said the detective, is that there are 500 silver or gray Dodge Intrepids of the right vintage licensed in Spokane County. In past cases, officers have tracked down every car necessary on their list of possibilities, but it takes months to do the job. There are close to 50 matching Intrepids licensed to people living in the 99212 ZIP code, which encompasses the crime scene.

There was only one Robb. Bob Long, Robb’s father, said he has thought about how different Robb and the person who killed him were: Robb Long could no sooner leave a person dying in the street than he could cut off his own left hand.

He had, some time ago, suffered a terrible beating at the hands of a half-dozen men, because he’d stepped in to defend a woman who was about to be sexually assaulted behind a Spokane Valley bar. The next day he showed up at the home of Elsie and Robert Long, his grandparents, wearing a hat and sunglasses to hide his bruises and walking stiffly. All he would say about the fight, Elsie Long said, was that it was a good thing he was there and that he didn’t know the woman for whom he’d been pummeled.

Robb worked the pharmacy counter at Costco Wholesale, where he was so well regarded that several customers attended his funeral. He once tracked down an elderly customer, Louella Jacobson, a neighbor of his, to make sure she knew how to handle a powerful pain medication for a mending shoulder.

“Make sure you take those on time. And here,” Robb said reaching into his bag, “here’s some stool softener on me. Those pain pills might make you constipated.”

When a co-worker was seven months pregnant, feeling less than sexy on her birthday, Robb clocked in to work with two dozen white roses and a smile that was nine-teeth wide. When friends crashed at Robb’s after a long night of poker, they got the futon; Robb fell asleep on the living room floor with his golden retriever-Labrador mix, Bogie.

Co-worker Elaine Potvin’s little girl Shelby wanted to know if Robb was too old to be her boyfriend.

The location of Robb Long’s death was so unlike the other places in his life. He was alone in the unfriendliest of areas. It’s a half-block west of a tired-looking porn shop, a half-block east of a used car lot and the I-90 on-ramp to someplace, anyplace, else. It’s the kind of concrete and gravel landscape that washes clean of tragedy in a single thunderstorm.

But there’s a line of accident investigation paint across the road that even now punctuates Robb’s sad story. The line points to a photo leaning against an overpass wall of a young man with a big smile. These last traces of tragedy conspire to ask two questions. Who? Why?