What to Know
- A woman has been arrested in the deadly hit-and-run of a 77-year-old widowed mother of four outside a Queens church
- The driver told police she thought she'd hit a chunk of ice and kept going until the ice fell off
- It wasn't until she got to work at a nearby hospital and heard about a hit pedestrian in the E.R. that she got a "weird feeling"
A woman accused of mowing down and killing a widowed mother of four leaving church in Queens told police she thought she'd hit a chunk of ice, then started to have a "weird feeling" when she got to work at a nearby hospital and learned of a hit-and-run pedestrian being brought into the emergency room.
Police had been looking for the driver who struck 77-year-old Jum Sum Yim as she left Mass at St. Paul Chong HaSong Roman Catholic Church in Flushing Wednesday morning.
Surveillance video from the church shows the woman being dragged by a dark car outside the church on Parsons Boulevard between 32nd and 33rd avenues, according to Father Andrew Kim, who said the video shows the driver then taking off.
Prosecutors say the Toyota Corolla dragged Yim -- who had the pedestrian right of way -- for nearly 200 feet. She was found on the ground with numerous injuries, and taken to Flushing Hospital Medical Center, where she died.
Geum Min, 58, of Flushing, was arraigned Thursday on charges of leaving the scene of an incident without reporting, failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care. Attorney information for the woman was not immediately available.
Min allegedly told police at the time of her arrest that she was on her way to work when she thought a chunk of ice had gotten lodged underneath the car, and that she kept driving until the ice broke off.
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When she got to work at the hospital, she learned a pedestrian was being brought in after being hit at Parsons Boulevard and 32nd Avenue. Min began to have a "weird feeling," and then continued to have a weird feeling all day that it may have been the pedestrian, and not a chunk of ice she'd hit that morning.
Min was released under supervision and ordered to return to court on Feb. 1. She faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.
Yim had a daughter and three sons, one of whom works for the FDNY, according to her family.
"This whole situation, this act is pure evil, what happened to her and how this happened," the victim's adult daughter, Mimi Yim, said Wednesday.
"I can't fathom what kind of person in the right state of mind would hit someone and leave someone to die like that," said son Jae Yim.
