Hit-and-run drivers killed four people in Philly in the last week. Police and relatives ask for public’s help.
There have been four fatal hit-and-runs over the last week. "It's horrible," a police captain said.
A 60-year-old woman who was struck by a hit-and-run driver in Northeast Philadelphia earlier in the week has died, police said Thursday.
Saixiang Lin was struck shortly before 6 a.m. Tuesday at Summerdale Avenue and St. Vincent Street in the Castor Gardens neighborhood. She was pronounced dead at 2:35 a.m. Wednesday at Jefferson Torresdale Hospital.
It was the fourth fatal hit-and-run in the city over the last week, a number that’s higher than normal, Capt. Mark Overwise of the police Accident Investigation District said Thursday. With Lin’s death, there have been 120 fatal crashes on city streets so far this year, he said.
“It’s horrible,” he said.
“Everybody should be outraged that someone would be involved in a crash and leave,” Overwise said. “If you hit somebody, you may not necessarily have committed a crime, but if you leave, that’s a crime.”
No arrests have been made in these hit-and-runs, police said.
Lin’s daughter-in-law, Joy Lin, said Thursday that her mother-in-law moved 10 years ago from Fujian province in China to Brooklyn, N.Y., and was recently living with her family in Northeast Philadelphia because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Her two sons, ages 3 and 6, loved their grandmother, who cooked for them and took them to the park while Joy Lin said she and her husband worked in a Chinese takeout restaurant.
“She likes to go out every morning for a little exercise,” Lin said. After her mother-in-law didn’t return home Tuesday, the family tried to find her, but then learned from police that she was at the hospital.
“I told my kids, ‘Grandma became a star,’" Lin said, crying in a phone interview. Her older son, she says, asks: “Is she going to be cold?”
Also Thursday, police released an image of a white, newer-model Cadillac SUV that is believed to have fatally struck 81-year-old Elisa Osano on Oregon Avenue about 5:10 p.m. Saturday. Osano had just crossed Oregon Avenue near Eighth Street when she fell into the roadway and was hit by the vehicle, which was headed east on Oregon, police said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Overwise said it was not clear if the driver knew that a pedestrian was hit.
Osano’s niece, Angelica Monteclaro, of Topeka, Kan., and her husband were at Osano’s South Philadelphia home Thursday getting ready for her Friday funeral. “She’s very independent,” Monteclaro said.
Osano grew up in Iloilo City in the Philippines, came to the United States decades ago, worked as a secretary in New York and New Jersey, and then lived in Philadelphia for many years, Monteclaro said. Osano’s husband died in 2016, and she lived by herself with a beagle named Apollo, Monteclaro said.
Also on Tuesday, about 8:30 a.m., Shampella Glover, 48, who was getting into her vehicle on the 5600 block of Upland Way in Overbrook, was fatally struck by a vehicle whose driver left the scene, police said.
Shortly before 7 p.m. Monday, 37-year-old Leonid Kadomsky was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver on the 7500 block of Roosevelt Boulevard in Rhawnhurst, police said. Kadomsky, of Bustleton, was pouring gasoline into his Nissan when a 2010 Acura traveling south in the outer lanes of the Boulevard hit him and his car. The man driving the Acura ran from the scene.
Police are asking anyone with information on these incidents to call 911 or the Accident Investigation District at 215-685-3180.