Originally Published in January, 2005
Messiah Lovelady was killed by a hit and run driver in 2004.
For the family of Nine-year-old Messiah Lovelady, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver in May, 2004, it’s a light-colored mini van.
For Anthony Savarese, it’s every dark-colored sedan, his eyes darting to the grill in hopes of finding the telltale front-end damage that resulted from the impact of striking and killing his 14-year-old daughter Jessica on a road in Franklin Square.
In a hit-and-run crime, you don’t have a face to hate. Four wheels and an engine become your boogeyman.
Last year, three children were killed by hit-and-run drivers on the roads of Long Island. Only one arrest has been made.
The nature of the crime implies speed, blink-of-an-eye action that renders eyewitness accounts shaky at best. In Messiah’s case, he was killed by a light blue or green or champagne-colored van. With Jessica, it was just a large dark car. No one saw the license plate number. No one saw the driver.
Often the only clues are the remnants that break off from the car after it hits flesh. And for detectives, that is sometimes all they’ve got. For Messiah, pieces of a front grill and amber lens from the passenger-side turning signal/parking lamp point to a 1991-95 Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge minivan. There are about 15,000 of these vans in western Suffolk/eastern Nassau alone. For Jessica, a piece of a headlight points to a 1989-91 Ford Taurus. There are more than 10,000 Ford Tauruses in Nassau and Queens.
At least it’s something.
In a study published in 2003 by the National Center For Statistics and Analysis and sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 18 percent of pedestrian fatalities in single-vehicle crashes from 1998 to 2001 were hit-and-run. In 2001, 4,882 pedestrians were struck and killed, 781 the result of a hit-and-run. You can see a running tally of hit-and-run victims in the United States on websites like www.deadlyroads.com. Some days, there have been three, four, five people left dying on a road as a car drove away into the horizon. The variety of the victims, as well as the variety of the drivers (when they’re caught), illustrates that this is a crime that can happen to anyone who crosses a street or gets in a car.
MESSIAH AND HIS SNACKS
Messiah Lovelady made everyone smile. Bursting with energy while still respectful of his elders, the third-grader at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School shared a room at home with his two brothers, Aquines, 11, and Christopher, 14. At 4:45 p.m. on May 12, Messiah and Aquines were walking home from Pete’s Deli, where Messiah had purchased $2.25 worth of cakes and cookies.
One block away from the crosswalk on Straight Path Road, a four-lane road with a 40 mph speed limit, the two decided to cross.
