Letter to the editor: Speeding driver took the life of dog; signs need posting

Talk about it

We live on Stutsman County Road No. 38 (blacktop highway from Ypsilanti, N.D., to U.S. Highway 281) and need to vent.

At about 5:30 p.m. Sept. 20, my kids along with other smaller kids were playing outside.

Someone in an older blue pickup drove past our farm very rapidly.

The kids were having a great time until the truck drove by, hitting and killing our dog, Wesley. We saw the truck hit the dog. We saw the driver stop, look out his vehicle and drive away. One thing that we are very thankful for is that it wasn’t one of the kids that he had hit. By going as fast as he was, I wonder if he had total control of his vehicle. If he was driving so fast that he couldn’t stop for a dog running onto the road, then he was going too fast to stop for a child, too. I just wish that the driver would have had the decency to stop by the house and tell my son that he was sorry for hitting his hunting dog.

My son was so excited to use Wesley, a German shorthair, for the upcoming pheasant season. Wherever my son would go, Wesley would go. Wesley would ride along on the back of my son’s four-wheeler to search for pheasants that they would soon be hunting together.

Wesley did get a last ride with my son — not a happy ride as my son laid Wesley’s limp body on the seat of his four-wheeler and rode to the grave that he dug himself, just for Wesley.

If this driver would have slowed down to the legal speed limit, he would have been able to view the surroundings, seen the kids playing in the yard and realized how much harm he could have caused.

My main concern with this letter is for people to slow down along county roads before someone gets killed. The speed limit is 55 miles per hour. Some people driving from Ypsilanti seem to get up on top of the Ypsilanti hill and will drive as if there is no speed limit. County Road No. 38 needs to be marked with the proper speed limit signs and drivers need to abide the speed limit — the road is not a race track and the home owners living along the road want their children and grandchildren to be safe when riding their bikes along the road, instead of having to worry about vehicles blasting by their house like the person who killed our dog.

Charles T. Davis and Bobbi Rode

Ypsilanti, N.D.

Tags: opinion, letters, speeding, dog, driving, accident, vehicle