A woman killed when a hit-and-run driver’s car knocked her off an elevated Bronx expressway was just days away from starting a new job and a new chapter in her life, her grieving family told the Daily News Monday.
Cops are still looking for the reckless driver who mowed down Jasmine Hunter, 32, early Sunday morning along a stretch of the Bruckner Expressway, where the car she was riding in was involved in a minor fender-bender.
Police said Hunter, riding with her boyfriend to her Bronx home, stepped out of the car near Exit 51 in Soundview at about 1:15 a.m. and was struck by a passing driver who kept on going.
The impact of the crash threw Hunter off the elevated expressway and onto Bronx River Ave. below the roadway, cops said.
Medics took her to Jacobi Medical Center, but she could not be saved.
Her tight-knit family said they can’t stop thinking about how she suffered.
“I never thought in a million years I would bury a child. I always thought they would bury me first,” said the victim’s mother, Karen Hunter, 57, who lives in Brooklyn, where her daughter grew up.
“They said the car hit her and she flew over the railing and hit the street 13 feet down. That’s all I know,” the mother said
“He was on the driver’s side,” she said of her daughter’s boyfriend. “She don’t drive.”
She said the car crash would have been bad enough.
“It was a three-car accident and one car hit the other car and then it hit the other car,” the mother said. “The car Jasmine was in was spinning and spinning and spinning. And then everything happened.”
Compounding the tragedy is the upcoming holiday and the new job Hunter was scheduled to start next month, her mother said.
Hunter, the mother of a 10-year-old daughter, was on her way home from a shift at a Red Lobster restaurant where she was working. But next month, she was scheduled to trade in her apron for a new job at a local post office.
“She was so happy,” Karen Hunter said. “The day before, she was at work. But Friday, that’s when she went down to the post office and filled out everything for the post office. She was looking so good. She really dressed up really nice. Her hair was looking nice and she was so happy. She was moving up and getting better in her life. And now it’s gone and she’s not going to be able to do the thing she was supposed to do.”
The mother said she wants justice for her daughter.
“What I want to know is, who did it?” she said. “Why you didn’t stop. I want to get some information. The driver who hit her and killed her, he needs to pay for what he done. There’s a lot of hit-and-runs been going on lately. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that you took someone’s life and you kept going.”
Instead of planning for Thanksgiving, she said the family has to plan for a funeral.
“They said she had life when they got her and then she died at the hospital, so she tried to hold on,” Karen Hunter said. “She has a 10-year-old daughter. It’s just a lot for me right now.”
The mother said she would miss her daughter’s fun-loving spirit, and her insatiable love of music.
“She likes all types of music,” the mother said. “She likes reggae. She likes Jamaican music. She liked to dance. She liked R&B … ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot,’ that type of thing. She definitely liked to have fun and she wants you to have fun. Everybody always says, ‘Where’s Jas? She coming? And we’d be like, ‘Yeah, she coming. She’s on her way.’”