OLNEY—A situation of either a hit-and-run driver, or a fight, that reportedly started at a location between Olney and Noble and ended at the Olney McDonald’s restaurant has left friends and family of a 17-year-old Olney boy perplexed over local law enforcement’s response to the matter.
Officially, Olney’s chief of police Kevin Paddock said there is an ongoing investigation, but with not much to go on.
Paddock did confirm, however, that the incident occurred early Sunday morning, July 13, when at approximately 3:01 a.m.
At that time, authorities responded to McDonald’s in Olney of a report of a 17-year-old male who was found by a McDonald’s employee outside in McDonald’s parking lot.
When authorities talked to the male he advised that he “thought he had been hit by a car.”
However, he then later said that he “might’ve been in a fight.”
Paddock said the male was transported to Richland Memorial Hospital to be treated for minor injuries he sustained, which included a black eye and a cut above his eye.
Friends and family have advised Disclosure that there was a little more to it than that, though.
According to information they have been able to gather, the boy, whose name Disclosure learned from these sources as Jake Chrtt, didn’t suffer just minor injuries as Paddock described.
They enumerated several injuries that would be consistent with being struck by a hit-and-run driver, which he told friends and family was the last thing he remembered occurring: Several contusions in one hip; a dislocated knee; severe road rash on his face, and several cuts and bruises.
Chrtt advised that earlier in the evening, he was at a friend’s house in Olney. Several kids had been “sitting around drinking” and other kids were leaving. Chrtt didn’t have a ride home, so he opted to walk a back way from Olney to Noble. At the Fox River Bridge, he said he recalled a glimpse of something white and that was the last thing he remembered until he was inside McDonald’s with cops surrounding him.
Friends advised that Chrtt had somehow gotten into a McDonald’s employee’s car, which was where the employee found him, bleeding all over the interior. It’s unclear whether he accessed the car himself, or whether someone actually placed him there.
Sources at that restaurant said that police had asked for video surveillance from that time of night, but that the equipment had recently been hit by lightning and they weren’t sure if any surveillance footage was available.
Another source advised that Chrtt had “white paint” on him, but that police didn’t seem interested in that fact, and were of the opinion that the boy had merely gotten into a fight and was hesitant to name the person or persons who had been involved in it.
Whatever the case, no charges have been filed, and in typical Olney police fashion—in which deaths such as those of Jaimee Rupe, Ed Hataway and Joe Galyean go unaddressed and unsolved, let alone a mere ‘possible’ hit-and-run of a 17-year-old who had the misfortune of being at a party where he probably shouldn’t be—there’s not much more that can be stated about the incident until someone forces the issue with authorities…and even then, there’s no guarantee it will be handled properly.