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Tavares man remains critical as police continue to seek hit-and-run driver

A Tavares motorcycle rider critically injured six weeks ago in a hit-and-run crash, remains on a ventilator as police seek the other driver in the crash.
Jim Juillerat was rear-ended by a pickup truck as he rode his motorcycle on Highway 19 in Tavares, police said.
The force of the impact sent him careening off the road into a brick wall.
Instead of stopping or calling 911, the driver took off, police said.
If it wasn’t for a passing doctor who stopped to render him aid, Juillerat’s wife Kathy is sure he would not have made it.
“A physician happened to be on her way to work,” she said. “When she came upon the accident, she had her stethoscope, she started attending to him.”

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Jim Juillerat’s condition has improved, but his wife still worries he could take a turn for the worse.
“There has been a fatality at this same area, at the same block, and I’m hoping my husband is not the second,” Kathy Juillerat said.
She still doesn’t understand how someone could just take off after such a serious crash.
“I cannot believe a human being would leave another, and I was told by one of the witnesses that this person got out of his truck and went down and looked at Jim lying on the ground and turned around and ran to his truck and drove away,” Kathy Juillerat said.
She’s not sure what may have prompted the driver to flee the scene, but believes there has to be some sort of reason.
“We don’t know if he didn’t have insurance, if there was a warrant out for him,” she said. “There has to be a reason another human being would leave another lying like that.”
Myrt Price

Myrt Price, WFTV.com

Myrt Price joined the eyewitness news team as a general assignment reporter in October of 2012.