All those CCTVs, but we can’t solve a hit-and-run case

EDITOR'S COMMENT

ARE the police right to close the case on the van driver who knocked down 95-year-old Ethel Hall?
Though the accident occurred six months ago, the police have stopped their investigation because of lack of witnesses and CCTV coverage.
There is little doubt the police employed all their available resources to find the hit-and-run driver. Nor is there any doubt they were faced with an almost insuperable task.
But they have faced more intractable cases in the past and struggled on – certainly for a longer period – in the hope that clinching evidence may turn up.
Mrs Hall did not die directly following the accident but suffered a stroke that led to her death.  However, it is extremely unlikely that the accident and Mrs Hall’s death are not linked.
The police point out that because there was no CCTV footage of the intersection of Bellina Mews and Fortess Road  area where the accident directly happened they could not be sure of a case.
But there is certainly a network of CCTV cameras in the area and in other nearby parts of Fortess Road and Kentish Town Road and we wonder whether all of them were carefully scrutinised for any sighting of the likely culprit, a white Ford Transit van, at the time of the accident. Direct enquiries by officers may then have produced results.
The fact is that Mrs Hall, a woman of 95, popular and independent, was mown down by a van which then cruelly drove off.
It is hardly likely the driver did not know he had hit Mrs Hall.
This was an abominable offence and the culprit should be caught.

On thin ice

A BIT of buck-passing is going on with the council over who is responsible for gritting the  roads.
Basically, at the moment they are blaming the government for failing to give them enough supplies of grit.
But when they were responsible for their own stock piles why did they stick so
rigidly to government guidance that grit should be reserved only for roads ?
It was only guidance after all?
At least they did no worse than six years ago when the then Labour council were caught out by the winter freeze.
Then the council said that as they had a smaller direct labour force than in the past they could not grit all necessary streets.
We assume the council is similarly handicapped today.