Man identified 10 years after being killed in car accident

A South Yorkshire policemen took on the case in his free time.

Transcript

00:00The body of a man has finally been identified 10 years after he was struck by a car near his home in Walthamstow.

00:09Brian Willis died in a traffic collision on January 22nd when he was hit by a Mercedes,

00:15but at the time detectives had struggled to identify him or find his family.

00:21Now though, a South Yorkshire police officer who gave his free time to investigate the crash in East London

00:27has successfully identified Brian and helped give the family some closure after his death.

00:35Detectives who initially investigated the collision had been unable to identify the victim or locate his family,

00:42although they had heard he may have been called Brian Wallace and that he had relatives in the Sheffield area.

00:51Now despite the Mercedes driver going before the courts and receiving a suspended sentence,

00:56the case could not be closed because the victim had not been formally identified.

01:02Then, missing persons charity Locate International shared an appeal to identify the man in January of 2024,

01:10which was followed by a local news story in the Sheffield Press.

01:14Local police officer Nick Doddsworth first became aware of the case via that article on the Sheffield Stars website

01:21and offered his free time to try and solve the mystery.

01:25Officer Doddsworth said that the Met police were really helpful,

01:29but when he got the case notes from them, it became quite straightforward.

01:35The Sheffield policeman solved the case through a partial DNA match

01:39and gave closure to Brian's family once identifying him.

01:44Thank you for coming.

01:48Thank you so much.