Police and the family of a renowned entomologist killed by a hit-and-run driver are hoping for a Christmas miracle.
Someone must have seen the crash. Someone must have seen 80-year-old Robert Elbel standing in the darkness of Highland Drive when a vehicle bucked the retired university professor into the air during rush hour and killed him. Someone must have seen the car speeding away.
Beyond that, his children say, there is no way a driver could hit him and not know it.
But it has been one year since the crash killed the man crossing Highland Drive after getting off the bus, and his death remains one of a few unresolved Utah slayings from 2005.
It is also the only unsolved pedestrian fatality in Deputy Mike Schoenfeld's five-year career as an investigator for the Salt Lake County Sheriff Department's major accident team. Despite a $10,000 reward, a meager trickle of tips to police have yielded nothing.
"Our chances of solving this now are so low," Schoenfeld said Thursday. "We're going to need a Christmas miracle."
After a year of grief and loss, Elbel's three children would like answers to their questions.
"I'm not out for vengeance," said son Karl Elbel, 36. "I don't want the person to go to jail. I don't want to press charges. I just would like to know what happened."
The children also want closure for their mother, Lyda, who was married to Elbel for 45 years and has suffered medical troubles.
"We would just like some end to the story," said Ruth Vayo, 41, Elbel's daughter. "Someone hit my dad and drove away and left him to die in the road. Whether it was an accident or not, the person just should have stopped. Someone should answer for this."
But the investigation has been difficult from the beginning.
Elbel, who lived in East Millcreek, was struck and killed about 6 p.m. Dec. 1, 2005, just after stepping off the bus at 3500 South and Highland Drive. He lived for a few minutes, but he died from the injuries before he could be loaded into a Life Flight helicopter that landed in a nearby parking lot.
Although investigators scoured the area, not one bit of physical evidence was found that dark December night one year ago — not a broken headlight, not a tire mark, not a single paint chip.
"Nothing," Schoenfeld said. "We had absolutely nothing."
In the early months of this year, one hopeful tip after another failed to turn up any useful information.
"We even had a 63-year-old witness who watched it happen, saw the impact and saw Mr. Elbel go up into the air, but who could not tell us whether it was a pickup truck, a passenger car or even what color it was," Schoenfeld said.
A camera from the University of Utah Credit Union captured the bus stop in the background of the business' Highland Drive side door. Police were hopeful. "We thought we'd be able to clean up the video and watch the accident happen," Schoenfeld said.
The film was of terrible quality. A California company carefully analyzed the video and tried to enhance it but between the darkness and trees that blocked the view, detectives couldn't see anything helpful.
What they did see were three or four cars that passed by the crash site as it happened. "There are several people who didn't stop and didn't talk to us and watched this happen," Schoenfeld said. "Someone else out there saw something, but just doesn't want to be involved."
At urging from Elbel's daughter, the television show "America's Most Wanted" said they would look at Elbel's case — and did put it on its Web site — but didn't do a story.
Another blow came recently when the $10,000 reward offered by Meadow Gold Dairy for information in the case expired. After calls from Vayo, the company on Friday reinstated the reward for another six months. It expires June 1.
But new leads have been slim, and investigators haven't touched the case in several months, Schoenfeld said.
The only open lead comes from a grainy videotape supplied by a camera at Home Depot on Highland Drive at about 3500 South. That footage shows a gold midsize pickup truck stopped in the parking lot of Home Depot moments after the collision that killed Elbel.
Two security guards noticed the driver get out and look at his vehicle, as if he was looking for damage, then get back in and drive away. A man and his wife were sitting in their car when the pickup pulled up next to them in the parking lot.
The couple described a white man in his mid-40s, about 6 feet tall with an average build, who walked around the truck. Witnesses said he looked upset, even angry.
Detectives have been able to put together a composite sketch of the driver based on two more witness accounts.
Anyone with information on the hit-and-run can call the sheriff's office at 743-7000.
So the children and their mother, Lyda, are left missing the man who loved bugs and Thailand and his family.
Elbel earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Oklahoma. He served in the Navy, and then worked for the U.S. Civil Service in a variety of bug-studying capacities for 25 years. He spent two stints of time in Thailand studying mosquitos and the transmission of malaria.
Later, he spent 30 years as an entomology research professor in the Biology Department at the University of Utah. When he died, he was returning from the university, where he was doing volunteer research work.
At his memorial service, his family asked for donations to be made out the University of Utah, c/o the Robert Elbel Scholarship fund to benefit biology students.
"There is never going to be a happy ending to this story," Vayo acknowledged.
Karl Elbel is trying not to be angry. He's trying not to be frustrated the driver hasn't done the right thing. He thinks he's moving forward, finding closure, then the frustration flares up again.
Six weeks ago, Bap Akol Deng Bap, a 36-year-old Sudanese immigrant, was hit and killed on 3900 South near Highland Drive while riding his bicycle home from work.
The driver fled, but turned himself in to sheriff's officials the next morning. Pedro Sosa was arrested and booked into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of negligent homicide and leaving the scene of an accident.
"I heard that and I couldn't help but get a little angry," Karl Elbel said. "Not to play the victim card, but I couldn't help wondering, 'Why does that family get to know what happened? Why does that driver have a conscience and the person who killed my dad apparently does not?'"
E-mail: lucy@desnews.com