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Island woman pleads for driver who struck husband to come forward

COURTENAY — With tears streaming down her face and her two children by her side, Evelyn Bally appealed to the driver of the vehicle that struck her husband’s bicycle along a dark stretch of highway in Fanny Bay.
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Evelyn Bally, with her daughter, Calixa, 9, and son, Desmond, 13, In Courtenay on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014.

COURTENAY — With tears streaming down her face and her two children by her side, Evelyn Bally appealed to the driver of the vehicle that struck her husband’s bicycle along a dark stretch of highway in Fanny Bay.

Bally found her husband Paul Bally, 48, lying in a ditch more than four hours after he had gone out Monday night for his regular ride along the Old Island Highway. He was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

At a news conference in Courtenay on Wednesday afternoon, Bally recalled her husband’s sense of fairness as she spoke about the hit-and-run driver.

“One thing Paul believes is if you played by the rules nobody got hurt, but someone is not playing by the rules and now he’s hurt,” Evelyn said. “Who’s going to teach my son to be a man? Who’s going to walk my daughter down the aisle? Who’s going to help raise my children? He’s my rock. He’s kept us on a moral path.

“So I appeal to the driver. Let my family have closure. I was thinking, you know, what if he had stopped to see what had happened. What if he had even just called emergency [services]. [Paul] might still be here. He might not have all his pieces, but he might be here. You left him in the ditch for me to find.”

Paul Bally, who taught French at Lake Trail Middle School and volunteered with the Fanny Bay Fire department, had cycled the road where he was hit three times a week for the last 13 years.

The image of her husband lying there continues to haunt Bally. She can’t get it out of her mind.

“I don’t want that picture anymore,” she said. “I don’t want that picture in my head. I don’t know how to get it out.”

Bally said she wants justice served. “Please driver, please come forward,” she pleaded.

“Let it be over.”

The Comox Valley RCMP and North Island Traffic Service are asking the public’s assistance in locating the vehicle involved in the hit-and-run. Police believe it is likely a Ford F250 truck, a Ford F350 truck or an Excursion-style of vehicle with a manufacture date between 2002 and 2004.

The colour of the vehicle was originally said to be white, but after further examination, Sgt. Mark Whitworth of North Island Traffic Service said, investigators are now looking for all colours of vehicles in the described categories.

Anyone with information about the collision is asked to contact Whitworth in Campbell River at 250-286-5646.

An online fundraiser to support Bally’s family, at gofundme.com/izoygc, has raised more than $5,000 in less than two days.