After a life-altering crash, a Long Beach couple pleads for help finding the driver

An extra beat of caution wasn’t enough to protect Annie Pauli and her husband from a hit-and-run driver last month.

When Annie, 74, and David, 77, cross Fourth Street near their home on St. Louis Avenue, she always makes sure the oncoming cars stop before she steps off the curb.

The intersection has no stoplight or sign, just button-activated yellow flashers to warn of pedestrians.

This time, on July 17, a driver in a white sedan appeared to slow down for them, but when David and Annie started across the two-lane road, the car — for some reason — quickly accelerated.

“The next thing I know, I see a hood of a car in my face,” Annie said. The driver sped off, leaving them splayed on the asphalt as bystanders rushed to help.

Six weeks later, the driver is still unidentified, and Annie and David are growing impatient for some kind of closure.

They’ve become frustrated with police, whom they criticized for not releasing video of the crash quicker to seek help from the public.

In response, Annie and David decided to go public themselves and take their plea for help directly to the Long Beach community.

It was “heartless and cold” for the driver to leave them there on the ground, Annie said. She still has flashbacks to the image of the car hood coming at her as she futilely raises her hand as if to block it.

Then, her memory is blank until the moment she awoke on the pavement, unable to move her arm. Her humerus bone, doctors told her, was broken clean through. It would take a year of rehab for it to heal, and she’d likely never regain full range of motion.

For a time, David’s situation was even more precarious, she said, including punctured lungs, a fractured collar bone and pelvis, and nine broken ribs. He’s now using a walker to get around.

Even when she was still hospitalized in the days after the crash, Annie said, she was frustrated by the lack of movement on the case.

She knew businesses in the area had video, but the police department, which has been hobbled by vacancies including a hollowed-out traffic enforcement division, had so far not released the footage or publicly called for help finding the driver.

Annie said she kept pushing, and on Wednesday, police released a short video of the crash and put out a public call for help. But Annie said that measure of progress came with another indignity. She was surprised and hurt when she read the police description of her and David’s injuries as “moderate, but non-life-threatening.”

“That was an insult to us,” she said.

Police said their intent was not to insult, but to protect David and Annie’s privacy by giving only a general description of the injuries.

They released the video only this week because detectives had been pursuing other leads. “After exhausting all leads, detectives are seeking the public’s assistance to help identify the suspect,” Long Beach Police Department spokesperson Alyssa Baeza said.

Had police acted sooner to release the video, Annie thinks the chances would have been better to find the culprit.

“If they had done it right away, the chances are much, much better,” she said.

In her living room Thursday, Annie began to cry — not about her pain but about her inability to tend to the garden in her front yard.

The couple has lived in Long Beach since shortly after they got married in 2015. They’d met at a poetry group and bonded over their love of writing and their shared experience navigating a world that wasn’t always understanding about their autism diagnoses.

Annie always saw her yard as a means to show her love for her new neighborhood. But since her arm has been in a stiff sling, her flowers have started to die.

Mustering a bit of hope, she turned to David.

“You know what they say, ‘There’s always next spring.'”

Police urged anyone with information about the crash to contact LBPD Collision Investigation Detail Det. Joseph Johnson at 562-570-7355.  They described the car as a white, newer-model, four-door Kia with a license plate ending in 243.

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