Driving her daughter to an early morning horse-riding lesson before the sun’s rays have hit the cornfields lining Frank Kenny Road, a woman spots a man walking alone on the 80 kilometre-an-hour thoroughfare near Navan.Only three houses dot that stretch of rural road, set back hundreds of metres from the dimly lit asphalt. Just one street lamp lights the nearest corner. It’s around 5:10 a.m. and she doesn’t know why the man is alone or why he’s walking the two-lane road, but by the time she drops her daughter off at the stables, she’s made a decision.“I’m going to go back and pick up that young man and take him where he’s got to go,†the woman would later tell Michael Morlang’s grieving parents at the side of Frank Kenny Road what she told her daughter that morning before she turned back.She found the 30-year-old Morlang’s bloodied and battered body lying in the middle of the road.Less than 20 minutes after first spotting him alive and walking, the woman phoned police. Morlang was dead by the time they arrived, a victim of a fatal hit-and-run one day shy of his 31st birthday.Kathy Morlang, Michael’s mother, and her husband Brian Visneskie were at their home, which was, itself a testament to her son’s craftsmanship and handiwork,on the edge of Clarence-Rockland on that Sunday, Aug. 11 in 2013.“The police knocked on our front door and then our world was turned upside downfrom that moment on,†Kathy recalls, clutching a photograph of her son and sitting on the backyard deck that Michael helped build.The weekend of the Navan Fair, held at the beginning of every August, is a busy one in the area, drawing folks from neighbouring communities.Michael had attended a Saturday night bachelor party on Aug. 10 and was planning to stay at a friend’s house after the festivities.His parents, a year later, are careful in discussing the details but say there was some sort of mix-up and Michael was dropped off somewhere other than where he planned to stay. Figuring he could make the difference up on foot, Michael opted to walk to where he had planned to stay. He was travelling along Frank Kenny Road,about halfway between Navan and Vars, when he was struck. The driver fled the scene.The police knock at the door jolted Kathy and Brian into a life without Michael that even now, a year later, is a struggle.Kathy and Brian got married in October 1998 when Michael was 16. He was Kathy’s only child but Brian has three of his own.A busy kid who was “always on the go,†Michael was the man of the house before Brian and Kathy fell in love.“At first, it was, I think, hard for him to see a man come into our life, but it didn’t take long and they became friends,†Kathy says. “Brian gained his trust.â€They became a family.Over the years, Michael grew into a hard-working and caring man who eventually found his passion in being an ironworker. Hewas honest above all else, his parents say.“If you were his friend, you were his friend for life,†Kathy says.“In fact, the kids he went to school with in grade school, they all still chummed together, right up until …†her voice starts to tremble. “… The last day.â€She misses his laughter, his smiles. “I miss his hugs,†Kathy says.It’s the unanswered questions that gnaw at Kathy and Brian now. Who was driving the car that hit and killed their son, what led to the collision and why did that person run Did he or she get out of the car to see Michael as he lay there dying Why didn’t the driver call police“You can’t move on,†Kathy says. “I keep reliving that day over and over again.â€They are both stuck at the moment when police knocked on the door.“It’s pretty hard to get past that when you don’t know anything else,†Brian says.There are about3,600 hit-and-runs in Ottawa every year, but city police onlyinvestigate only about 1,000 of these cases.The losses of eachcase can range from minor vehicle or property damage tothe heart-breaking fatalities that police and devastated families hope tosolve.Collision investigator Sgt. Derek Menard says that people who hit and runflee for a variety of reasons.“Sometimes it’s to avoid liability, maybe they don’t have insurance or alicence, and sometimes it could be criminal in nature, such as drinkingand driving,†Menard says.In less severe cases, a driver could flee simply because theydidn’teven know the vehicle hit anything.But for Kathy and Brian, it’s hard tobelieve that the driver who hit Michael didn’t know that somethinghorrible had just happened. It’s even harder to believe that a yearlater, they’re still waiting for answers.Ottawa policerenewed their public appeal for information in June and plan to , the one-year anniversary of Michael’s death.After analyzing vehicle paint found at the collision scene, investigators believe that they’re looking for a dark red or burgundy suspect vehicle that was made by General Motors in 1997, 1998 or between 2003 and 2010. Police said the vehicle was travelling north on Frank Kenny toward Huismans Road, although they couldn’t say whether alcohol or speed —a major concern for residents who see vehicles routinely zip along the road — were factors. The nature of Michael’s injuries led police to believe the vehicle would have had sustained extensive damage and might have been repaired by a garage or body shop in the area after the hit-and-run.Thanks to the eyewitness account of the woman who spotted Michael both alive and after he was hit, police know he was struck sometime between 5:10 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on Frank Kenny between Russell and Colonial roads.On the one hand, the accessibility that the road provides to so many areas, coupled with an increase in the number of people in town dueto the fair, could mean the driver isn’t a local. But Michael’s family believes the only reason to be on the road would be totravel to Orléans and at that time of day on a Sunday morning, the road is unlikely to have been used by commuters, suggesting the person responsible could be from the area.Police were initially flooded with calls, Brian says. As time passed, the call volume lessened.In the absence ofsolid leads and tips, Brian and Kathy have taken it upon themselves to continue to plead for anyone with information to come forward. They would call police with information about any vehicle with damage in the area in the early days and have travelled nearly 16,000 kilometres putting up flyerswith their son’s face on them.Flowers were being dropped at the scene the same day as the collision, as news about what had happened spread through the community.What was a smallmemorial at first, grew, largely due toMichael’s parents. They built crosses, installed solar lights and watered flowers.They went to the memorial every day, sometimes twice a day.The memorial, at the site of sorrow, became a place of comfort.“That was the last place that he was alive and I feel close to him,†Kathy says. “I talk to him when I go. I tell him what we’re doing for the day, if it’s a good day or a bad day. I let him know that i miss him.â€Morlang’s family and friends are organizing a benefit to be held Aug. 9, two days before the anniversary of his death, to raise money for a reward for any information in the unsolved case. If no one brings any new details that could help crack the case, Brian and Kathy say they will eventually split whatever’s raised between Crime Stoppers and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.It’s a prospect that Brian doesn’t want to face.Brian and Kathy stop every time they’re on Frank Kenny Road by marker 7 where their son was killed. Whether they’re going to the grocery store or out-of-town, they always stop. They pull over to the side of the road where they’ve spent hours toiling away at a memorial, busying minds and hearts devastated by a loss.They can’t keep going, knowing that someone else didn’t stop for their son —not to check to see if the man hit was still breathing, not to call police, not to give their son a chance to see his parents again.It’s also that Briancan’t bring himself to drive over the part of the road where Michaelwas killed, so he pulls over, stops, then drives on the shoulder before merging back onto the road. avoiding the patch where his son was run down.“It could happen to anyone in the blink of an eye,†Kathy says. “It could be anyone’s child.â€â€œI need answers,†she says.“I want to be able to go to Michael’s grave …â€Brian finishes her sentence: “And say we found who did it.â€