BYRON, Ga. — Kalie and her husband McKenzie Driggers are Byronites and proud dog parents.
Now she is asking for the public's help in identifying the driver who she said is responsible for killing one of her dogs in a hit and run.
Kalie tells 13WMAZ on Thursday, Aug. 22, around 9 a.m., McKenzie let their dogs, Ares and Zeus, out to play but only Zeus came home. McKenzie said that's when he picked up his phone to call his wife.
"I knew that I needed to meet her out the door when she got home because I knew how much of an emotional wreck she was gonna be," McKenzie said.
He says both dogs were running around the front yard without a leash and as he caught up to Ares, to bring him back inside their home, someone in what appeared to be a white pick-up truck, sped down Newell Road and struck Kalie's service dog.
Both say they believes the driver deliberately hit Ares and then drove off. Kalie said the driver had no intentions of slowing down, adding her neighbor witnessed it from across the street.
"I know from the guy who lives across the street, that you know when this truck topped the hill over here - he heard the truck speed up, and he had seen Ares standing in the road, he should have seen a 6-foot man standing there," she said.
She said that's a day they'll never forget and the person who hit their dog, they'll never forgive.
"Nobody has come forward; I don't think I could ever forgive that person for hitting my child," Kalie said.
While Ares belong to both the Driggers, Kalie says her relationship with Ares was different. In 2022, doctors told her she couldn't have kids because she had ovarian cancer. She said Ares was her pride and joy, and adds he made her a mom.
"(We're) just telling ourselves that he was as good as gold and he was too good to be here," Kalie said.
Though Ares lived a short life, Kalie says he left a pawprint on their hearts, so she wanted to remember him with a permanent gesture.
She got a tattoo of Ares' nose on her forearm in the shape of a heart a week before he died. Now she says she's going back to add angel wings and his birth date.
"I plan on getting the same tattoo put on my chest," McKenzie said.
Kalie ordered a custom urn for him, that they plan to sit on the mantel in their family home.
Driggers says her and her husband decided not to open an investigation with Byron Police but they're pushing to get speed cameras on Newell Road, to make the street safer.