(NY Daily News) A 9-year-old girl who had just left church was killed in Brooklyn on Sunday when a motorist suspected in a hit-and-run crash fled a traffic stop and caused a three-car wreck, police said.
Rebecca Ramnarine, a fourth-grader from St. Albans, Queens, died at Brookdale University Hospital shortly after the 5 p.m. accident in Canarsie.
A 62-year-old man driving with a suspended license had been pulled over because his Honda Odyssey matched a description of an SUV involved in a hit-and-run crash, police said. As cops were talking to the driver he drove off, raced for a few blocks and rammed into the back of a Hyundai Elantra in which Rebecca was a backseat passenger, police said. A third car was also involved in the crash.
“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, 38.
The mom and her husband were in a car about 2 minutes behind Rebecca, who was riding with a friend, Faith Cummings, 11, and her mother, Esther Cummings, 42.
They had just left services at Restoration Temple Assembly of God in Canarsie and were headed to dinner when the crash happened.
Esther Cummings, her daughter and three other people who were riding in the second vehicle hit by the Odyssey, a Toyota minivan, were all being treated at Brookdale.
Police said all five had minor injuries, but friends said Faith Cummings had a broken pelvis.
Rebecca was a rambunctious girl who loved fashion, her mother said.
She loves to dance. She wanted to be a pediatrician. She had a heart of gold.
“She loves to dance. She wanted to be a pediatrician,” the mother said. “She had a heart of gold.”
As the grieving mother and father, Richard Ramnarine, stood outside the emergency room at Brookdale, the man suspected in the crash that killed their daughter was inside the hospital being treated. “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 said.
Rebecca’s father said that when he reached the scene of the crash and saw the crushed car his daughter was in, he was forced to take a step back. “I didn’t know the condition of my daughter. I just knew it was something I wasn’t ready to deal with,” the father said.
As for the driver of the Odyssey, he said, “I’ll let the system take its course.”
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