On Christmas Eve, while many in St. Joseph were celebrating the holidays with friends and family, one family was spending time together trying to make sense of the loss of their brother, son and friend.

Douglas Hancock of St. Joseph was walking down South Sixth Street about 7:40 p.m. on Dec. 24, 2008, when a vehicle struck and killed him. Three months later, no one has come forward in the incident.

Mr. Hancock’s sister, Rhonda Ingham, with whom he was living, said the family is still trying to put the pieces together.

“We want to believe it was an accident,” she said. “The road was icy and we learned later that he might have slipped on ice.”

Ms. Ingham said that still doesn’t excuse the driver of the car that hit him from driving away.

“When you leave somebody and not know if they’re alive or not, it’s no longer an accident,” she said.

The sad reality, said Sgt. Bill McCammon, St. Joseph police traffic supervisor, is that there are many cases in the city where cars or people get hit and the perpetrators get away.

In 2007, there were 759 hit-and-run incidents, and only 221 were solved. Hit-and-run numbers were lower in 2008, with 716 incidents, or about two cases every day, but only 208 were successfully cleared.

“Most hit-and-runs go unsolved. The vast majority don’t have enough information to build a case,” Mr. McCammon said.

Hit-and-run cases can run the gamut from someone reporting their car being hit while it was parked at the side of the road to more serious cases involving injuries or death. Mr. McCammon estimates the cases are split about evenly between the two.

As in Mr. Hancock’s case, Mr. McCammon said one of the biggest problems is finding evidence or witnesses that can point police in the right direction.

“Sometimes there’s just very little evidence and you’re just hoping for somebody to come forward,” he said. “Or there will be no information on the driver because their license plate number isn’t filed correctly or they have improper registration. That’s when we’ve hit a dead end.”

Sometimes the pieces do come together, Mr. McCammon said, such as the March 16 hit-and-run accident where a woman died after being thrown off a motorcycle. The driver, identified as Joshua S. Morgan, drove away from the scene before police arrived. Though the Plymouth vehicle had yet to be registered in his name, a license plate that fell off the car at the scene was able to be traced back to him, leading to his arrest.

“Sometimes it’s just as easy as the driver having valid plates and us simply driving over to their house and asking them about the incident,” he said.

Mr. McCammon said sometimes identifying the suspect’s vehicle is made easier when debris such as a piece of the car’s grill or bumper at the scene matches up.

Even if all the evidence adds up and a car is identified, Mr. McCammon said if there are no witnesses and no one admits to driving the vehicle, it’s hard to make an arrest.

“You still have to prove who was driving at the time of the hit-and-run,” he said. “A lot of the time you can’t do that.”

Mr. McCammon said the public can help the police solve hit-and-runs this year by taking time out of their day when driving and being aware of their surroundings.

“Most people don’t stick around,” he said. “They’ve got their own thing going on and they don’t want to wait to ID themselves as a witness. They assume someone else will stop.”

Since no one has yet to claim to the hit-and-run that killed her brother, Ms. Ingham said it’s tough for her family to get closure. She said they hold the memories of Mr. Hancock close, and a philosophy she shared with him makes her confident someone will come forward.

“My brother and I had this philosophy — what goes around, comes around,” she said, “This person, there will be retribution in some way. I believe and he believed it. You just have to let things play out.”

Ms. Ingham said the event opened her eyes to hit-and-run accidents that occur all over and she empathizes with the suffering families that have to deal with the aftermath. Though she said she hasn’t spoken with any people who have had similar experiences, she does offer them advice.

“Don’t let it make you bitter,” she said. “Don’t let go of those good memories. Appreciate what you did have.”

Andrew Gaug can be reached at andrewgaug@npgco.com.