A 77-year-old man was in custody Wednesday in connection with a hit-and-run collision that fatally injured a 74-year-old woman as she crossed an East Los Angeles street on her way home from a market.
Matiana Jimenez was struck by a pickup truck about 10:30 a.m. Dec. 8 as she walked across Whittier Boulevard outside of a crosswalk near Williamson Avenue, according to the California Highway Patrol. She died a short time later at a hospital.
Raul Juarez Carranza of East Los Angeles was arrested about 11 a.m. Tuesday, after CHP officers spotted him driving the suspect vehicle near the scene of the fatal collision, CHP officials said. They said news media coverage of the case generated tips that allowed investigators to identify Carranza.
Three days after the collision, Jimenez’s daughter issued a plea for the driver to surrender.
“To the person that hit my mom, please find it in your heart to turn yourself in,” Patty Garcia said at a news conference at the CHP’s East Los Angeles Area office. “If it would have been your mother, or your wife or your daughter … you’d be right here where I am right now, pleading.”
Carranza is being held without bail at the Inmate Reception Center in downtown Los Angeles, according to sheriff’s inmate records.