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Friday, July 1, 2011

NY: Driver of SUV kills woman, injures her daughter while trying to score parking spot

SUV at Amsterdam Ave. and 98th St. after hitting two women

















An elderly Manhattan woman who doted on her daughter was killed Thursday night as they walked together and were hit by an SUV whose driver was backing into a parking spot, police said.

"Look out! Look out!" a man screamed as the maroon Ford Explorer zipped in reverse along an upper West Side street and headed straight for Yolanda Casal, 78, and her daughter.

But the driver, who police said was unlicensed, kept right on going.

Casal, originally from Cuba, got the worst of the jarring impact.

She was hurtled through the air and suffered massive head trauma, witnesses and a family friend said.

"The lady just flew," said David Gomez, 47, who was sitting outside a nearby laundermat.

His friend was the one who had yelled the unheeded warning.

Casal's daughter, Anais Emmanuel, who suffered broken ribs, could only console her dying mother as she lay motionless on the street, encircled by onlookers.

Witnesses said Casal was bleeding heavily over several parts of her body, particularly her head and face.

"You couldn't see her face through it all," said Remir Baly, 30, one of many bystanders who observed the aftermath of the curbside horror on Amsterdam Ave. shortly after 5 p.m.

Casal and her daughter were rushed by ambulance to St. Luke's Hospital, where the ever-loving mother died a short time later, said police and her son-in-law's friend.

The friend, Alan Mitchell, said Casal, who lived a block from the accident scene, loved caring for her daughter and her husband.

"She loved for them to spend the weekend with her. She loved cooking for them. She even doing their laundry," he said.

Emmanuel's husband, Irvin Emmanuel, wept as he embraced loved ones at the hospital, where his wife was recuperating.

The 38-year-old man who was driving the Ford was later placed under arrest and was expected to be charged with driving with a suspended license.

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