A 9-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y., girl leaving church on Sunday was killed in a three-car crash, the Daily News reports.
Fourth-grader Rebecca Ramnarine died at Brookdale University Hospital shortly after the late-afternoon accident, the news site notes. The driver who caused the crash is also the suspect in a hit-and-run collision that occurred before the accident that killed Rebecca.
According to the Daily News, 62-year-old Kenneth Palache was pulled over by police because his SUV fit the description of a vehicle involved in a hit-and-run crash. While cops were questioning him, he drove off, ramming into the car where Rebecca was sitting in the backseat.
"I saw the EMS try to take my daughter out of a mangled car. She was lifeless and had blood all over," said Rebecca’s mother, Abiola Ramnarine, according to the report. Ramnarine and her husband, Richard, who were following in a car behind the one carrying their daughter, were reportedly on their way to dinner after church.
"She loves to dance. She wanted to be a pediatrician," the mother added. "She had a heart of gold."
Other people in the car with Rebecca apparently escaped with minor injuries, except for one other girl—Rebecca's friend Faith Cummings, 11—who is said to have a broken pelvis.
Of Palache, who was being treated at the same hospital where Rebecca died, "He took my daughter's life and I'm hurting, but I don't feel like I want to go in there and hurt him," Richard Ramnarine told the paper.
Palache was charged on Sunday with criminally negligent homicide as well as fleeing the scene of an accident, the Daily News notes.
Read more at the Daily News.