Dallas Mom Killed In Laundromat Parking Lot Crash
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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Shock. Sadness. And calls for change. In Dallas, an Oak Cliff community struggles with strong emotions after a young mother is killed after stepping away from a laundromat. Maria Cruz Gonzalez-Cortes, 24, was pinned between two vehicles.
"I went to get the baby out of the car," says her husband, Cleofas SantaMaria, through an interpreter. "And she was crossing. And all I heard was the impact."
Call it a cruel twist of timing.
"I had a feeling that my wife had been injured, because I saw all our clothes scattered." SantaMaria gently placed their 15-month-old daughter, still in her carrier, on the ground while he rushed to his wife. But, it was too late.
According to Dallas police, the driver was speeding. Surveillance video from a nearby business captured the fatal impact.
"You go to a laundromat, you don't expect to come outside and that's the end of your life," says Joseph Garcia, who lives nearby and often frequents the shopping center near Westmoreland and Illinois. "It could have just happened to anybody—wrong time. Wrong moment."
Juan Carlos Velasquez, 47, is charged with failure to stop and render aid, causing serious bodily injury or death. While others rushed to the scene—even turning the vehicle on its side in a desperate effort to free Gonzalez-Cortez—the suspect can be heard pleading with the crowd, insisting that he wasn't drinking and "just got scared." The surveillance video later shows him walking away.
"I just hit me real hard," says Carlos Zavala. Zavala owns a business nearby and says speeding is a big problem in the area. He says he's spoken to the shopping center management about speed bumps. His cameras captured the impact of the fatal collision. But, other lenses were also turned on the aftermath.
A local social media support group called 'Oak Cliff Latino 2016' posted a video where the suspect can be heard pleading with the crowd that gathered—explaining that he wasn't drinking and just "got scared." Zavala's cameras captured him calmly walking away from the scene.
"The other people was helping my sister," says the victim's sister, Yolanda Gonzalez. "And he was running. So that's a coward."
The grieving family said they have nothing to say to the man that cost them so much: but, had this to say to the rest of us.
"Be happy with your family," says Gonzalez, "because you never know when it's the last day."
The family has started a GoFundMe account to help with funeral expenses.
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