CLOSE CALL FOR SENIOR
Vet shaken by hit-and-run
Retired Canadian Navy veteran Howard Dinning saw his fair share of rough seas in his nearly three decades of service, but nothing sent the shiver of fear through him like being a hit-and-run victim.
A female driver slammed into the 87-year-old’s shopping cart knocking him to the ground in the Walmart parking lot at 7100 Tecumseh Rd. E. on Tuesday afternoon. After reversing out of her parking space, the woman sped off, hitting the cart a second time.
“I never experienced anything that scary in my time in the navy,” said Dinning, who retired with the rank of captain after 291/2 years.
“What really bothers me is the lack of respect for the life of an individual.”
Dinning said the woman, who he described as in her 30s with darkish hair, was driving a darker grey car.
The vehicle had been parked next to his Chrysler in the lot while he began transferring groceries from his shopping cart onto the back seat on the driver’s side.
“She started her car, so I thought I better move my cart behind my car so she can get out, but she quickly reversed it and made a sharp left-hand turn,” Dinning said.
“She ripped off the wheel and one side of the cart and knocked me to the ground. She then sped off and must have been going 50 miles per hour in the parking lot.”
Dinning fell heavily on his left side leaving him with a cut on the back of his hand, swollen feet and legs and a sore back.
“Thank God there wasn’t a child sitting in the cart or they’d have been killed,” Dinning said. “I’m just thankful she didn’t hit anyone else speeding away.
“Their security people said they thought it was someone shoplifting and running out of the store.”
Store officials didn’t file a complaint with Windsor Police because camera surveillance of the fleeing woman wasn’t conclusive enough to prove she was shoplifting.
Dinning said Thursday he planned to consult his family about filing his own complaint with police over the hit-and-run incident.
Dinning lavished praise on the Walmart employees who helped him up and got him back inside the store. Employees tended to him for an hour and offered to call an ambulance for him.
“One of the assistant managers followed me home to make sure I got there all right,” Dinning said. “She came inside to explain what had happened to my wife (Joan). They couldn’t do enough for me.”
Officials at the Walmart store declined to comment on how common shoplifting is at the store.
However, figures from studies and Statistics Canada confirm that retail outlets in Canada are losing about $4 billion annually.
It’s estimated shoplifting is now costing the average Canadian family more than $200 annually in higher costs.
The National Association for Shoplifting Prevention estimates one in every 11 people has shoplifted in the U.S.
A poll by Forum Research found Ontario residents shoplift at even a higher rate than their American cousins.
Fifteen per cent of the slightly more than 1,000 respondents admitted to shoplifting with another 12 per cent refusing to answer that question.
There were 672 incidents of shoplifting in the Census Metropolitan Windsor area in 2016 according to Statistics Canada.
That’s a drop of nearly 21 per cent over the previous year. Only Waterloo-Kitchener and Sudbury report fewer shoplifting incidents per 100,000 people in Ontario.
Dinning said this incident happened so quickly all he could think about was how he was going to get home and what was he going tell his wife.
“This was shocking,” Dinning said. “I’ll be fine, but I don’t want this woman to get away with this hit-and-run.”