Hit And Run Driver Turns Himself In After Hitting Elderly Woman

Just days before her 78th birthday, Hilda Garcia was hit and left for dead at the intersection of 9th Street and 37th Avenue in Miami just before 11:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 10th. The members of her family, left devastated after the sense of loss, pleaded with the public to come forward) if anyone possibly knew anything regarding the fatal hit-and-run crash.

According to a story that aired on the local NBC affiliate station in Miami, police investigators say that Garcia had been struck by a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed. The elderly woman was not only dragged beneath the vehicle that hit her, but with enough force that her legs were severed from her body. Investigators urged the family not to view her body because of the horrific state her body had been left in.

In a follow-up story Ricardo Alexander Gonzalez, 25, turned himself in to Miami Police officers who were dining at the El Caribe restaurant on Wednesday. Gonzalez admitted to police as having smoked marijuana just prior to the fatal crash. He also admitted that he knew he hit something but was afraid for his life.

Gonzalez has been charged with vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter as well as two additional related charges.

Earlier in the week, police had received a tip call from Pembroke Pines neighborhood. The call described a vehicle matching the description of the suspect vehicle with visual damage. Investigators are now attempting to recover what evidence may be found on that vehicle. Gonzalez sold it to a junkyard earlier in the week and it has since been shipped outside of the state of Florida.

When Gonzalez was asked why he took so long to turn himself in after the crash, he said he needed to see his mother and grandmother one last time because he knew that he would never see them again after what he realized what he had done.