ATLANTA — Atlanta police are looking for the driver who left the scene of a deadly crash on Interstate 75.
Witnesses said they urged the victim to move her car off the interstate just moments before she was hit and killed.
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“I wouldn’t suggest you stand right here, sweetheart,” is what can be overheard on cell phone video recorded early Sunday morning.
“The last things she heard from anybody was ‘Sweetheart, please be safe,’” remembered Mary Brathwaite.
Brathwaite was with her friend Yasha Reid when they stopped on I-75 to help a driver who crashed her car into the interstate median near Cleveland Avenue around 3:30 a.m. Sunday.
The woman was standing next to her car on the inside left lane.
“She said she fell asleep; she was really tired. She was seven minutes away from home and that she was waiting on AAA,” remembered Brathwaite.
“We could literally barely see her. She was, the way her car, like she didn’t have her hazards on,” said Yasha Reid.
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“We literally like begging her to get from where she’s at because it wasn’t safe,” said Brathwaite.
Brathwaite said, just months ago when she was with her husband, they saw a woman stranded in floodwaters on the interstate.
They were able to get that woman to safety. And Brathwaite was hoping this time, she and Reid could get this driver to safety.
“Not even 10 seconds later, all we heard was boom,” said Brathwaite.
An oncoming car hit and killed the woman, who the Fulton County Medical Examiner identified as 23-year-old Jaquelin Telesforo Vazquez.
Police continue to search for the driver who hit her after that driver ran away.
Brathwaite says she’s heartbroken she couldn’t make a difference this time.
“And I wish it would have went different. I wish you would have listened to us,” said Brathwaite.
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