By Tien-Shun Lee
Jackson Heights grandmother Miriam Toribio gratefully accepted a $2,000 check presented to her Friday by Assemblyman Jose Peralta (D-Corona) to help brighten her future and the prospects for her granddaughter in the aftermath of a suspicious triple-hit-and-run accident that killed her daughter while she was crossing Roosevelt Avenue.
“I don’t have any words,” said Toribio in Spanish after her assemblyman displayed the giant-sized check in the back of her living room inside her one-bedroom apartment on 111th Street.
“This tells us we do have support in the community. For me and my granddaughter, we will have a future. I have been given help to achieve the dream that my daughter had to provide an education for her daughter.”
As 15-month-old Laritza Guzman mingled among reporters, Toribio and Peralta discussed what happened on the morning of Jan. 18th when her daughter, Natalie Guzman, 18, was hit by three different cars on Roosevelt Avenue at 111th Street after buying a 79-cent bag of potato chips from an all-night deli.
According to police, Guzman was hit at around 5:32 a.m. by a black, four-door sedan speeding eastbound on Roosevelt Avenue, which propelled her body underneath the No. 7 elevated train. Moments later, her body was crushed by a white, four-door sedan speeding westbound, followed by a black sports utility vehicle.
Both Toribio and Peralta maintained that the triple hit-and-run was not an accident.
“It smells like foul play,” said Peralta. “It would have had to be a very weird accident for three separate cars to hit her.”
One witness, Luis Santos, told police he tried to stop traffic when he saw Guzman lying in the street surrounded by a crowd of about 15 people, but the third car, a black SUV, accelerated instead of slowing down and ran over Guzman again, said Toribio.
Police arrested the driver of the black SUV, Raymundo Herrera, last week after they linked DNA from human flesh stuck to the bottom of his brother’s vehicle to Guzman. They tracked down the dark-colored 1995 Nissan Pathfinder after a livery cab driver at the scene relayed its license plate number to another cab driver, who told police.
Herrera, a chef who lives in Long Beach, L.I., was charged on Jan. 28 with manslaughter, reckless endangerment, criminally negligent homicide and leaving the scene of an incident without reporting it, according to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Toribio said she did not know Herrera.
The NYPD’s Crimestoppers division has offered a $2,000 reward to anyone who can provide information about the triple hit-and-run that eventually leads to an arrest and conviction. Peralta and police urged anyone who has information to call Crimestoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS, or Peralta’s office at 718-458-5367.
Two weeks before her death, Guzman was involved in a fight at the Olympia Urena after-hours club in Jackson Heights that ended with a man shooting a bullet that grazed her in the leg, said Toribio.
“They threatened her life,” said Torbio of the people in the bar.
Toribio said her daughter was a simple person who wanted to finish up her GED, get married and have four more kids. She worked as a waitress at La Simpita restaurant on 37th Avenue by 98th Street.
“She was very complacent,”said Toribio. “She loved to eat and she loved to dance.”
Although Laritza does not talk much, Toribio said she knows her little granddaughter misses her mother because she used to play with Natalie constantly.
Reach reporter Tien-Shun Lee by e-mail at news@timesledger.com, or call 718-229-0300, ext. 155.
