Police Release Hit-And-Run Footage; 'Definitely A Vehicle,' Confirms Witness

WAUKESHA — The Waukesha Police Department on Thursday released surveillance footage of an Oct. 14 hit-and-run on the city's south side, video that department officials described as showing, at minimum, a vehicle.

The 11-second clip, pulled from a gas station camera mounted roughly 200 feet from the point of impact, shows a pixelated shape moving across the frame in a color investigators have narrowed to 'white, gray, light tan, or possibly silver.' No plate is visible. No make or model has been confirmed. A rear bumper may or may not be present, depending on who at the department is asked.

'What we can say with confidence is that it is a car-shaped object consistent with a car,' said Lt. Howard Senn, a department spokesman. 'We're not ruling out truck. We're also not ruling it in.'

Within four hours of the footage going up on the department's Facebook page, it had been shared to the Oakdale Heights Nextdoor group, where a thread titled 'IS THIS THE CAR???' grew to 340 comments by Thursday evening, nearly all of them identifying a different vehicle.

A blizzard of tips

Resident Carol Fenstermacher, 58, posted a photo of her neighbor's Subaru Outback at 9:14 p.m., writing that it was 'light-colored and has definitely been places.' By 9:41 p.m., three other residents had submitted their own neighbors' vehicles, including a Honda CR-V, a Toyota Camry parked 'at a weird angle,' and a food delivery driver's Nissan Altima that had been idling outside a house for 'eleven minutes, which is a long time.'

Backslide Way resident Ned England, who monitors neighborhood traffic from a lawn chair with a radar gun as part of his Nedventuresout channel, said he reviewed four hours of his own footage after seeing the thread and flagged two vehicles he described as 'behaving suspiciously normal.'

'Normal is exactly what you'd expect them to look like if they wanted to look normal,' England said. 'That's the whole trick.' England clarified his footage was from Backslide Way, roughly 2.3 miles from the scene, and that he had no reason to believe either vehicle was involved beyond timing he called 'generally plausible.'

Department responds to tips

Lt. Senn confirmed the department had received 61 tips by Thursday night, 54 of which named a vehicle the owner could document was parked at home at the time of the incident, with timestamped doorbell footage. Four tips named the same gray Chevy Equinox. Three tips named each other's cars.

"We appreciate the engagement. We would appreciate it more if it were about the actual vehicle."

— Lt. Howard Senn, Waukesha Police Department

The gas station's owner, Dennis Prochnow, said he has fielded seven in-person requests to view the raw footage since Thursday morning, including from two residents who brought laptops to zoom in further. 'I told them it's already as zoomed in as it goes,' Prochnow said. 'After that it's just squares.'

No suspect, but no shortage of theories

Witness Darlene Opitz, who was pumping gas at the time and whose account largely formed the basis of the department's initial release, stood by her statement Thursday. 'I saw it happen. It was definitely a vehicle,' Opitz said. 'I want to be careful not to speculate beyond that, because speculation is how you get 340 comments.'

The vehicle struck a parked mailbox post and a recycling bin on the 1900 block of Hillcrest Court before leaving the scene; no injuries were reported. Police ask anyone with information, dashcam footage, or a strong but ultimately unsupported hunch about a specific neighbor to call the non-emergency line rather than post it to Nextdoor first.

As of Thursday night, the Oakdale Heights thread had been joined by two residents from outside the neighborhood who said they didn't live nearby but had 'been following along' and wanted to flag a gray sedan they'd seen idling at a Piggly Wiggly earlier that week.