Christopher Wood (WISN).
A Wisconsin man has been sentenced to prison after striking a 64-year-old couple as they crossed a street hand in hand, then leaving them injured on a snow-covered roadway.
Christopher Wood, 34, received four years behind bars followed by five years of probation after pleading no contest to hit-and-run causing great bodily harm, court records show.
The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office responded around 8:44 p.m. on Dec. 2 to a reported hit-and-run on Main Street in Merton, a village roughly 25 miles northwest of Milwaukee. Deputies arrived to find the injured man and woman lying in the roadway.
Paramedics transported both victims to a hospital for treatment.
WITI, a local Fox affiliate, and The Freeman of Waukesha County obtained a criminal complaint stating that the couple was intermittently conscious when officers found them. They suffered multiple broken bones and a brain bleed, according to the complaint.
Surveillance footage showed the couple checking both directions before entering the street while holding hands. As they reached the center of the road, the woman began waving her arms, apparently trying to alert an approaching vehicle.
A blue sedan then struck both pedestrians. The driver slowed briefly before accelerating away, the complaint reportedly said.
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Additional video showed the sedan fleeing, while investigators recovered pieces of the vehicle left behind at the crash site.
The following day, a sheriff’s deputy found a vehicle parked at a home about a mile from the collision. Its front-end damage appeared to match the debris collected at the scene.
As the deputy photographed the vehicle, a woman came out of the house and said she understood why he was there.
“It was my husband,” she reportedly told him.
She said Wood had left around 8 p.m. to “go for a drive” and returned with damage to the vehicle. The next morning, she drove him to work. Wood later said he wanted to “get it over with” and surrender, according to investigators. He was arrested at the home.
Investigators also reviewed surveillance footage from a gas station that reportedly showed Wood purchasing three cans of Miller High Life. Officers noted that he appeared to lose his balance inside the store.
Authorities have not released an update on the couple’s condition.
