Police, friends and family of Marc Ellis are renewing a plea for tips and information one year after the beloved 38-year-old was killed in a hit-and-run collision in Abbotsford.
Ellis was struck by a 2019 red Dodge Ram pickup while trying to rescue a dog dashing onto Lefeuvre Road south of Downes Road on Dec. 11, 2022. The vehicle’s two occupants abandoned the truck and fled on foot.
Girlfriend Amanda Wegerek has described him as a kind, selfless and compassionate man — an animal lover with four dogs.
“Put yourself in our shoes. If it was your family, you’d want the right thing. You’d want justice, you’d want some hope in the darkness,” she said in a video shared Monday by Abbotsford police.
In the video, Ellis’s sister Tamsin also urged anyone with information to come forward, stating that “every little piece” counts and will help bring the family closer to closure.
“You can’t imagine losing someone that is just a phone call away and suddenly they’re not there anymore,” she said.
“He was trying to do something good, and being the caring animal lover that he is, the caring person that he is, and it did unfortunately lead to him losing his life. It’s very sad.”
Abbotsford police have not definitively identified Dodge Ram’s occupants, but have made other “significant breaks” in the year since the crash, Const. Art Steele told Global News.
“We have evidence that would lead us to suggest who they may have been,” Steele said.
“However, any information that is still our there in the public that has not been forwarded to us may assist in either verifying any evidence or identities of those responsible for this crash.”
The pickup truck is registered to an Abbotsford business that has not cooperated with the investigation. Anyone with information on the hit-and-run is asked to call 604-859-5225.
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Editor’s Note: This is a corrected story. A previous version attributed a quote to Marc Ellis’s sister Jennifer. In fact, it was his sister Tamsin.