The family of a beloved 96-year-old Bronx woman wants to know who her killer is and bring them to justice.
Leonora Campbell was hit and killed by a motorcycle on June 29, reports show.
The retired nurse and great-grandmother of nine was on her way to pick up lunch for a child in need. Her family told the New York Post she was also picking up her medications when the biker ran her over.
“The kid was hungry, and she was willing to go out and buy him a piece of chicken,” Campbell’s grandson, Rolando Barrett, told the New York Post. “And just to step out and cross the street and get hit multiple times…We’re just trying to hold it together.”
Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows the vehicle driving down the street moments before the collision and then the impact. Police told CBS News the driver did not stop and fled the scene.
Barrett described the video to the Post.
“She’s crossing, he’s flying, and he hit her. She flew up in the air, tumbled two car lengths, and stopped,” he said. “He then dragged her, rolled over her and continued on. And then he stopped — he looked at her for a good minute, and then he left.”
“We called the ambulance for her, so they can actually try to pick her up. But because she’s fragile, she took her last breath right on this floor,” a witness told CBS News.
Campbell’s granddaughter, Sherice Thomas, told CBS News she is still struggling to come to terms with the loss.
“Everybody loved her,” she said. “She was amazing. She was so sweet.”
Campbell’s neighbor, Freddy Williams, 80, told the Post he was stunned by how she died. He added Campbell had just complained about reckless scooter-riding kids in the area.
“I could not believe that,” Williams said. “Me and that lady were just talking. She was telling me about these kids riding the scooters. She was telling me, ‘I hope I don’t get hit by a bike, because these people are going crazy. ’
Williams told the Post that Campbell would often urge him to go to church and would offer him packs of cookies.
“’No thanks,’ I’d say, so she’d go back inside and bring me a cup of cold water, and I’m glad she did because some days it was hot out here,” he said. “I’m going to really miss her. She was my friend.”
Campbell reportedly “had all her faculties on her” and was “very mobile” and independent, according to the family.
‘It’s just recklessness and no reverence for life,” Tia Hampton, Barrett’s fiancée, said. “We need our mayor to crack down on these bikes. This is vehicular homicide.”
Thomas told CBS News her family wants answers and justice.
“I hope [the driver] will see this everywhere, and it kills them with guilt. It just kills them inside, and they do the right thing,” she said.
Atlanta Black Star reached out to the family and police but has not heard back.
