Woman Charged With Hit-And-Run After Striking Buggy, Injuring Amish Man And Fleeing

The latest hit-and-run on an Amish buggy took place Friday in St. Lawrence County, New York, home to multiple Amish communities. Fortunately, no one was killed, but an Amish man was taken to hospital with injuries.

Also presumably good news: the driver allegedly responsible was soon identified and charged. More from WWTI:

Around 5:30 p.m. Friday, a hit-and-run collision involving an Amish buggy occurred on Linden Street in Oswegatchie, injuring the buggy’s operator, 34-year-old Joseph S. Miller.

The incident allegedly took place when Miller was traveling southeast on Linden Street and encountered a vehicle that attempted to pass another car, subsequently entering Miller’s lane. Despite efforts to avoid the collision, Miller’s buggy was struck and the other vehicle fled the scene.

Troopers who responded to the scene found debris from the suspect vehicle, which was later identified as parts from a 2018 silver Jeep Compass. The investigation was aided by the St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department.

Bobbi Jean Seguin, 26, of Ogdensburg, was identified as the alleged owner of the Jeep Compass involved in the crash. She has been issued vehicle and traffic law citations related to the incident, which are set to be addressed in the Town of Oswegatchie Court in March.

So essentially the driver made a poor decision to pass, ended up hitting an Amish buggy, and rather than stop, decided it would be better to take off. Miller was taken to a local medical center “for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries”.

There is no word on the horse, so I would hope and assume that means it is okay. An investigation into the incident continues.

St. Lawrence County is one of the more notable counties in New York state – and in Amish America in general, for that matter, due to its large number of Amish settlements.

That’s not to say it has an enormous Amish population, though around 5,000 Amish people do live in the county. But rather, it’s attracted quite a few Amish to start new communities within its borders – six distinct communities, to be precise. It is a large county in terms of area, so there is enough room for multiple Amish settlements.

With Amish living in multiple communities across the county, crashes do happen. Sadly, Oswegatchie has seen a relatively recent, fatal wreck. Twenty-one-year-old Abraham Shetler lost his life in late 2023 when his buggy was struck by a pickup truck in town. Eighteen months later, the driver was charged with criminally negligent homicide.

Only The Latest Buggy Hit & Run In This County

And looking at the county as a whole, this is at least the second hit-and-run crash on an Amish buggy in St. Lawrence County in the past six months. Back in July, a 35-year-old woman left behind two seriously hurt people after she struck an Amish buggy and fled.

Fortunately, their injuries were not life-threatening. She faced a felony as a result. At the time I wrote this:

Hit-and-runs on Amish buggies are not uncommon. There was the one in Kentucky less than a week ago, there was this one in May, there was this one in April.

I think people just assume that a) the buggy is not going to chase them down, and b) the people in the buggy don’t have easy access to recording, or even telephoning, technology.

So in the heat of the moment, and to someone predisposed to running from a problem, it probably “makes sense” to them to just take off.

But – as more than a few bad drivers have learned – just because they’re Amish, doesn’t mean they won’t be able to identify you (or, other drivers on the road).

And in a world of doorbell cameras and recording devices, you can’t be too sure what you did wasn’t captured on tape, so to speak.

I think those two factors still apply, nothing has changed there. Other things probably come into play as well, including panic, and/or whether the driver already has a criminal record.

In any case, fleeing after causing an accident is only compounding the mistake from a violator’s legal perspective. And in the worst cases, that decision may leave a victim behind who needs urgent medical care. That’s not what happened here, but in some cases, a prompt 911 call may save someone’s life.