By NAN Staff Writer
News Americas, BROOKLYN, NY, Mon. June 27, 2022: A Caribbean American family in Brooklyn, NY is mourning the loss of their Caribbean born mother after she and her grandson were the victims of a hit-and-run car thief.
The woman, Trinidad and Tobago immigrant Lyn Christopher, was fatally struck by hit-and-run car thief as she was returning from a nearby park with critically hurt 8-year-old grandson on Saturday, June 25th. Eight-year-old Jacob Butler, who was visiting his grandmother from Atlanta, is on life support.
The 67-year-old grandmother was crossing Macon St. at Ralph Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, coming home from nearby Saratoga Park about 7:10 p.m. Saturday when the speeding driver of a likely stolen Honda HR-V, fleeing a car stop, plowed into her and her grandson. They were around the corner from her three-story brownstone when the accident occurred. Jacob’s sister was walking a few steps ahead when her brother and grandmother were struck.
The boy remains in critical condition, sedated and on a ventilator.
“He’s fighting for his life right now,” NYPD Assistant Chief Judith Harrison of Patrol Borough Brooklyn North said Saturday night. “He could really use your prayers.”
“She should never have died like that,” the victim’s devastated son, Marvin Christopher, 49, told the Daily News in an exclusive interview as cops continue their hunt for the hit-and-run driver. “She didn’t need to be run over like an animal in the street … No one deserves that.”
Cops from the 81st Precinct had pulled the Honda HR-V at the corner of Ralph Ave. and Chauncey St. after cops noticed the vehicle had mismatched plates, a sign that the vehicle may have been stolen. There were two men inside the HR-V, apparently smoking marijuana, cops said.
As the officers approached, the driver floored the gas and sped north on Ralph Ave. “at an extremely high rate of speed,” Harrison said.
The SUV driver struck a 28-year-old bicyclist head on as he veered into oncoming traffic to go around two cars idling at a stoplight, cops said. The out-of-control driver then sideswiped an unoccupied Nissan Pathfinder before plowing into Christopher and Jacob.
The driver continued on, striking a motorist in a Honda Accord before mounting the sidewalk near Halsey St., hitting a 43-year-old man before slamming into a building five blocks from the initial car stop.
The two occupants of the crashed HR-V abandoned the vehicle and ran off. A possible suspect was taken into custody and interviewed but was let go after questioning, an NYPD spokesman said.
The bicyclist, the other pedestrian and the motorist hit were all rushed to area hospitals, where they are expected to recover.
Christopher and her family moved to the U.S. from Trinidad in 1989. She had been a medical secretary at NYU Langone Hospital’s cancer center’s pathology department for over three decades before retiring two years ago.
After surviving a series of heart attacks in March, she remained head usher at the Brooklyn Tabernacle church.
