Richard Chumney
Journal Inquirer, Manchester, Conn.
STONINGTON, Conn. — A police officer’s dash camera captured the dramatic moment last weekend when officials say a 75-year-old Mystic man deliberately drove into a stone wall on Masons Island Road in order to hit a pedestrian.
The crash unfolded minutes after the man, a former top administrator at Connecticut College, reversed his car into a pedestrian who had asked him to slow down, leaving two people with minor injuries, according to a crash report.
Stonington police have said the driver, Wendell L. Hisle, was charged with attempted first-degree assault and other offenses in the back-to-back crashes. The injured pedestrians, a father and son, did not require hospital treatment.
The dash-cam footage shows officers responded to the causeway that links Mason’s Island to the mainland just before noon in response to a report of a hit-and-run crash involving a blue BMW convertible that had struck a person in their leg.
In the video, the pedestrians flagged down the first officer who arrived at the scene and pointed to the BMW, which they said had returned to the crash site after initially leaving the area. The footage shows the officer ordering the driver, later identified by police as Hisle, to park his car on the two-lane road and to hand over his license.
Meanwhile, the pedestrians can be heard on the video telling the officer they suffered minor abrasions in the initial hit-and-run. The crash report shows one of the men was hit in his right knee while the other was struck above his left shin. A third person hurt their hand while attempting to move out the way, the report indicates.
The officer can then be seen on the video repositioning his vehicle behind Hisle’s car. The dash-cam then captures Hisle accelerating into the opposite lane of traffic before sharply turning right and slamming into the stone wall on the causeway where the pedestrians were gathered.
One of the victims “was sitting on the stone wall and had to jump out of the way to avoid a direct collision with the vehicle,” the responding officer wrote in the crash report. He noted the victim suffered a minor abrasion on his inner left thigh from Hisle’s vehicle and the wall.
“Whoa,” the officer can be heard reacting to the crash, according to the video. “Oh my god, hang on. He just tried to hit them again.”
The dash-cam footage shows Hisle beginning to drive away from the scene with noticeable damage to the front of his car, but the officer quickly stopped the vehicle on the nearby Gled Hill Street and immediately placed the man in handcuffs.
The footage does not show police questioning Hisle about the crashes. But police have previously said the first hit-and-run took place after one of the victims had spotted Hisle speeding and told him to slow down, leading to a verbal argument.
Before his retirement in 2023, Hisle was an administrator at Connecticut College where he served as the vice president for Information Services and librarian of the College, according to his LinkedIn profile and other public records. He could not be reached for comment.
In addition to attempted first-degree assault, Hisle was charged with two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment, two counts of evading responsibility with physical injury, reckless driving and disobeying the signal of an officer.
Police have said that Hisle was released on $250,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in state Superior Court in New London on Sept. 10 . Online court records for the case were not available as of Thursday afternoon.
This story includes previous reporting from staff writers Jessica Bravo and Christine Dempsey.
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