Anchorage police are crediting a citizen with helping them arrest a hit-and-run driver in a collision that left a child with minor injuries Wednesday morning.
Police spokeswoman Renee Oistad said in a statement that Phyllis Faccio, 64, was charged with driving with a revoked license and leaving the scene of an accident after the vehicle collision, which took place around 8:30 a.m. near Abbott Road and Corbin Drive.
"The 10-year-old and an adult driver were in a Chevy pickup, and (Faccio) ran a stop sign," crashing into the pickup, Oistad said.
As police and medics headed to the scene, another driver followed Faccio's 1988 blue Isuzu Trooper SUV when she drove away.
"The citizen followed the Isuzu, called police, and provided updates on her actions," Oistad wrote. "Faccio drove to 86th Court and Toloff Street where she abandoned her vehicle behind a dumpster and left the scene on foot."
Faccio subsequently stopped by a nearby coffee shop, where police caught up with her. She was ultimately arrested and held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex on $1,000 bail.
"She went into Starbucks inside Carrs on Abbott Road and was seen throwing away paperwork in the trash can," Oistad wrote. "The paperwork she had thrown away was the registration paperwork to her vehicle that she had abandoned."
Oistad said Faccio, who was additionally cited for failure to stop at a stop sign and not having insurance, also appeared on an APD list of local traffic scofflaws for having nearly $1,500 in unpaid traffic citations. Police place people on the scofflaw list when they reach a certain amount of unpaid, overdue traffic citations.
"If I'm on (the scofflaw list) and I'm driving your car, we can impound your car -- we can impound any car that's driven by a scofflaw driver," Oistad said.