City worker charged with DUI, hit & run

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) - A Virginia Beach city employee has been charged with DUI following a hit-and-run accident involving a motorcyclist and his passenger last week. 53-year-old Juanita Demastus, who is a Virginia Beach landscape supervisor, refused an interview from her Virginia Beach jail cell.

Chris Zimmerman and his passenger, Gemariah Shaw, were thrown into Demastus' Jeep Cherokee after she failed to yield.

"When my wife brought me my four month old I thought she was my five year old," said Chris Zimmerman who lays on a bed with 72 stitches in his face.  "The pain was so bad.  It hurt so much all over my face. The pain would grow all over my body when I was in the ambulance." 

Police say they later caught Demascus in the 600 block of Grant Street where she lives.

Debbie Tarkenton-Richter lives next to Demascus and helped alert police after she saw the Jeep. "It  was 12:30 in the morning. She told us she had been drinking, and she hit something when she was coming back into the neighborhood," she said. "That's all she knew...we started putting two and two together and we ran one block over where the crash site was and told police, and then police came to her home and arrested her."

Demascus has since been charged with one count of DUI and two counts of hit and run involving personal injury.

Shaw remembers the point of impact.

"I heard the sound," he said. "The I blacked out when I  was in the air. When I woke up I didn't see the car. I saw the bike, and I was looking for Chris...I saw him laying there, and I crawled over to him I tapped him and asked if he was OK. He didn't say anything. It was real bad. Everybody was scared."  

What upsets the two the most isn't Demastus' DUI, it's the fact she left the scene. 

"I think if you hit someone you should fess up...not even to stop and look down and say 'Are you OK?'  There is something wrong with someone like that," Shaw said.