A man driving a Ford Explorer fatally hit a 77-year-old woman crossing 22nd Street at Fourth Avenue yesterday afternoon. According to the Post, a minivan first clipped Jozefa Dzwiga, "but then, a Ford Explorer swerved around the van and ran over" her.
The Explorer was going south on Fourth and dragged Dzwiga 50 feet. The driver only stopped when people ran after him. Yahaira Vazquez who witnessed the incident told the NY Times, "I started running across the street, and I started yelling his license plate number, and then he stopped. He reversed and got out of the vehicle and explained to someone else that he didn’t see her and that it was an accident.” But then he got back into his car and left.
Dzwiga, who worked as a cleaning woman for a neighborhood bank, was taken to Lutheran Medical, where she was pronounced dead at 7PM. Police found the abandoned Explorer at 24th and Third Avenue and arrested Nahu Hurtado for leaving the scene of a fatal accident. The minivan driver, who did stop, was not charged.
