NEW YORK — The black car hit her
first, striking Natalie Guzman as she tried to cross a
Queens street to buy a bag of potato chips. The
18-year-old mother of an infant managed to get to her
feet and she was hit again, this time by a white car.
Four minutes later, as friends who had
stopped to help her up dived for cover, a black sport
utility vehicle hurtled through the 30 mph zone at an
estimated 80 mph. Miss Guzman,
who could not move, was killed instantly.
None of the cars stopped. Police searched
for the three hit-and-run drivers yesterday in the kind
of crime that disbelieving bystanders said reinforces
New Yorkers' reputation as a coldhearted lot.
The first car, traveling at about 60 to
70 mph, struck Miss Guzman as she attempted to cross the
two-lane Roosevelt Avenue, which runs beneath the
elevated subway tracks. Parked cars line both sides of
the street. The second car was
also speeding at about 60 to 70 mph, a witness told
police. As Miss Guzman lay in
the street, her friends discovered her and tried to
help. They told police they believed she was still
breathing. Then the SUV came barreling toward them. Miss
Guzman's face was so disfigured by the wheels of the car
that police asked a family member, instead of her
mother, to identify her. Eric
Gioia, who represents a Queens district on the City
Council, said the case recalls the death of Kitty
Genovese, who was murdered on a Queens street in 1964
while 38 New Yorkers watched from their windows and did
nothing to help. No one even called police. The triple
hit-and-runs, he said, represent "a level of human
callousness and depravity not seen since the Kitty
Genovese case." "It shocks the
conscience that three separate people would be so
callous as to mow someone down and just keep on going."
Miss Guzman's family believes she was
intentionally killed, saying she had feared for her life
since a bar fight two weeks earlier.
"The family thinks her death may have
something to do with that fight," said Olimpia Urena, a
neighbor who acted as a translator for Miss Guzman's
mother and aunt. The family came to America from the
Dominican Republic. Police say
only that they are looking for the drivers, first to
determine whether the drivers knew they had hit someone.
Miss Guzman's life ended Sunday morning
shortly after she left Los Primos Tournament Billiards
on Roosevelt Avenue in Corona, Queens, a predominantly
Hispanic neighborhood two blocks from the one-bedroom
apartment she shared with her 15-month-old daughter,
Laritza, and her mother, Miriam Toribio. This stretch of
Roosevelt Avenue is lined with bars and social clubs.
Miss Guzman dropped out of high school
after becoming pregnant, a friend says, and she had
recently decided to "get her life back on track."
"She said she wanted to make her life
normal, she wanted to do something with her life," Miss
Urena said. "She was studying to get her [high-school
diploma] and after that, she planned to go to LaGuardia
Community College." Miss Guzman had a job interview to
sell cosmetics lined up this week, Miss Urena said.
Miss Urena said Miss Guzman's family
finds it hard to believe that three persons could run
over her, and none of them would stop.
Ernesto Bruno, 56, who owns a pizza shop
inside the pool hall, told the New York Times: "You get
hit once, OK; twice, it's pretty unbelievable," he said.
"But three times, come on. Logically, you almost can't
believe it."
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