Look, does anyone here honestly think O'Brien would have left another human being to suffer or die if he had understood what had happened? His response has been reported that he thought maybe someone had thrown a rock at his car. An understandable conclusion, it seems to me, if you've been the object of a lot of public criticism, anger and threats lately. I'm not making excuses for O'Brien or any of the other church leaders but I think even our forum has become part of this national mood to lynch accused priests, who, by the way, are still half as likely to commit criminal offenses than any of the other professions. A little looking within wouldn't hurt even for the righteous.
His response was to claim he thought he hit a cat -- yeah, right. A cat that jumps up and cracks the heck out of your windshield and leaves a pool of blood on the top of your car? I'm a vet - when a cat gets hit its injuries come from the initial collision - which may knock it out of the path of the car but usually brings it under the frame of the car inducing further trauma. It doesn't get thrown up into the windshield because it isn't big enough relative to the bumper of the car.
Use a little common sense. When you hear hoofbeats, don't think zebras.
I don't know what he understood, he might have been drunk and not thinking or understanding much. The way I see it ---it's not so different than when you work for a corporation and some VP is caught doing something undefendable. It's not loyalty to the corporation to defend or even try to understand those who might be higher up but behaved like criminals or oafs. You don't quit your job because they do ---you're glad that they were caught and hope things get cleaned up so the company can survive.