A 28-year-old Fullerton man–who based on looks alone could win the title role in the Broadway musical version of Taxi Driver–was held in Orange County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bail for allegedly mowing down a man in a wheelchair and driving away without stopping earlier this month.
Surveillance video in the area of the crash in Fullerton caught a Ford Explorer with significant front-end damage.
That led investigators to the parking lot of a Tustin motel, where Brandon Joel Busse was arrested Saturday night on suspicion of felony hit-and-run causing injury or death, according to Fullerton Police Sgt. Kathryn Hamel.
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Marc Borgfield was in his wheelchair–and apparently outside the crosswalk–in the 2600 block of Orangethorpe Avenue, Fullerton, just before midnight Aug. 18 when the 49-year-old Buena Park resident was struck by a vehicle, thrown 170 feet and died.
If the driver who hit Borgfield had stopped (and was sober), he or she likely would have escaped criminal charges.
Especially when you consider Fullerton Police have cited two other incidents when the man in a wheelchair had been struck by vehicles: on March 3, near the same Orangethorpe location, when his blood-alcohol level was recorded at 0.36 or more than four times the legal limit for driving; and in March 2008 in Buena Park, where he'd also been drinking before the collision.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.