Accidental Hit-and-run

Location: Michigan. I work a delivery job and was making a delivery to a house that was on a narrow dead-end side-street. No streetlights, and it was lightly raining. I drive a 2nd Gen Honda Pilot. When backing out of the driveway of the house I was delivering to I apparently backed into the rear driver side fender of a neighbor’s car that was parked on the street with the rear driver side bumper of my vehicle.

This was a very low-speed collision. I didn’t hear the impact over my radio nor feel it. I was riding my brakes out of the driveway after toe-ing the throttle. Regardless, their fender got dented in and some scratches were left on my bumper.

Unaware that I had bumped into their vehicle, I drove off and returned to my workplace. I was told to take my break and right as I was about to clock back in a pair of officers entered my workplace to inform management that one of our drivers did a hit-and-run.

I was shocked and horrified that it had turned out to be me as I would never intentionally leave the scene of an incident like that. I’ve been in that very position where someone has struck my own vehicle and fled the scene… the officers showed me a photo of the damage to the other vehicle and tried to insist that the scratches on my bumper were “pretty bad” to which I asked them to please tell me what the threshold of “pretty bad” looks like to them as I would say some light scratches that ultimately buffed out when my manager wiped them away with a rag the next day.

I apologized to the officers and tried to assure them that integrity is a personal trait I hold dear and would never intentionally flee the scene of an incident. Had I known I had struck someone else’s vehicle I would try and make things right as much as possible.

The officers told me that I could go back inside and they would be in to speak with me again shortly.

When the officers returned inside the building I was given a citation for ‘failure to stop and ID after inflicting damage upon personal property’ - a Misdemeanor, and given a court date for the morning of December 4th.

This morning I received a call from the officer who responded to the incident and provided me with the citation that the city’s district attorney was going to be handling my case and to “go ahead and rip up that citation.” The officer told me I “should be receiving an email or something with more information” and to have a good day. I told him alright I hope you do as well and we hung up.

Now I’m at a loss as to what to do or expect. I don’t recall providing them with my email and I’m thinking that I should go to the courthouse on Monday morning to ask for more information but ultimately I guess what I came here to ask is if this sort of thing is normal, common, or legal: to tell me to rip up my citation and await further details?