Kalispell hit-and-run victim seeks answers

An uninsured victim of a Dec. 7 hit-and-run in Kalispell is still coping with injuries as police continue to investigate the incident nearly a month later.

Shauna Schoknecht, 49, of Kalispell, was left on the street with a fractured elbow, leg trauma, a broken tooth and traumatic cataracts affecting both her eyes.

“It’s been sheer hell,” she said in an interview three weeks after the incident, still awaiting treatment for one eye and a tooth.  

Schoknecht was struck at approximately 9:05 p.m. by a newer, dark-colored Jeep Cherokee while walking her dog after a Christmas party near the intersection of Second Avenue and California Street.

Schoknecht said the vehicle stopped for a few seconds after striking her, then navigated around her and fled the scene. Schoknecht’s dog, Katie, survived the incident.

Surveillance cameras from neighboring houses captured the incident from a distant angle. In the footage, the license plate is not visible, nor is the color or make of the vehicle clear. Several versions of the footage have been shared on social media. 

Schoknecht said she called the police while on the curb. Emergency medical workers put her in an ambulance, but after warning her of the cost she ended up calling her nearby parents for a ride to the hospital.

Schoknecht describes her eye trauma as similar to the experience of having “cheap scotch tape” over her eyes, and it makes her feel nauseated to keep her eyes open. 

“Even watching television makes me throw up,” Schoknecht said. 

She is prone to double-vision and can’t drive at night.

“The headaches are just awful,” she said. 

Schoknecht’s friend, Elissa Kohler, recently started a Gofundme account to help cover medical expenses, as the incident has brought hefty medical bills down on Schoknecht and left her unable to work. 

“Shauna’s a single parent — her daughter is in college but she’s trying to pay for it. She’s got a lot of medical work coming up,” Kohler said.

In the aftermath, Schoknecht is struggling to plan her treatment and press for finding the assailant, but she is concerned about the extent of Kalispell Police Department’s investigation. 

“It’s just super disappointing,” she said, comparing her case to a separate hit-and-run that occurred Dec. 20 on U.S. 93 and Treeline Road. Kalispell Police sent out a press release following that incident.

“That’s in the papers, it’s been on the news,” she said. “None of that happened with my case.” 

Kalispell Patrol Captain Chad Fetveit commented that the investigation is ongoing and that both Schoknecht’s case and the hit-and-run of Dec. 20 have leads that are “being followed diligently.” He said the public setting and daylight hour of the incident on Dec. 20 necessitated broader messaging.

Schoknecht has applied for relief from the Montana Crime Victim Compensation program, which assists innocent crime victims with crime-related medical expenses, including loss of wages. She found the application process very demanding in the wake of her accident, and said it could take two to three months for any help, “which I am 100% grateful for, but in the interim I’m pretty nervous.”

She believes the person who struck her lives in the area, and may have even hit her on purpose. She described their erratic driver as making a sharp left turn into the oncoming lane as Schoknecht and her dog sprint to make it to the other side of the street. 

After neighbors shared the video footage, Schoknecht was appalled. 

“They turned left onto the wrong side of the road. I was almost across. You can see me try to run from them. You can see where they accelerated,” she said. 

“They [the police] didn’t talk to my neighbors. They didn’t get that video that went public from the neighbors — I had to send it to them,” she added. 

She claimed that three weeks after the incident, she was told the police report was still not done. 

Schoknecht reiterated her appreciation for the people who have helped her since the incident, listing off friends and relatives who are driving her around and assisting her in various ways.

However the confusion from not knowing who struck her, or what is being done about it, or what she will do to return to her normal life, has left her restless.

“Somebody has to know who did it,” she said. “Whoever did it knows they did it.”

Carl Foster can be reached at cfoster@dailyinterlake.com.