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Family Mourns 12-Year-Old Girl Killed in Teen Joyride
By
John Del Signore
Published Dec 30, 2009
Modified Dec 30, 2009
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By
John Del Signore
Published Dec 30, 2009
Modified Dec 30, 2009
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More bitterly sad details have emerged on that fatal SUV crash on the Bruckner expressway late Monday night. 12-year-old Kaitlin Booth was killed when the SUV she was riding in jumped a curb, tore through a chain-link fence, crashed into a tree stump, and flipped on its side. Police believe the SUV was driven by an unnamed 15-year-old boy who took his mother's vehicle for a spin, with his neighbor Kaitlin along for the ride. Investigators say he was probably going 50 mph in a 30 mph zone, and may have lied about his actions when police arrived.
With the car flipped onto its side, Kaitlin managed to climb got out of the vehicle, and an EMT said that "at first, she looked fine," according to a Facebook post by her aunt. "But once they got her in the ambulance, she couldn't breathe," wrote the aunt, Nicole Migliucci-Ramirez. "They tried everything, but couldn't revive her." The boy initially told police that he and Kaitlin had been walking along Bruckner Boulevard, a service road in the Bronx, when she was struck by the S.U.V., a police source tells the Times. The boy said two black men hit Kaitlin with the SUV and ran, but the vehicle is registered to his family.
Another source tells the Daily News that police think the boy may have dragged Kaitlin's body from the vehicle to the sidewalk. After the accident, he apparently called 14-year-old friend Mark Ayers and said, "Oh, my God, I flipped the car! I flipped the car!" Ayers's sister got the call, and Ayers tells the News, "He was telling Kaitlin to run. All she heard was Kaitlin in the background saying,...'It hurts, I can't.'"
The boy was speaking with investigators initially, but the interrogation ended when a lawyer and his mother arrived at the 45th Precinct. He has not yet been charged, and his name is being withheld, but if you scroll through this devastating Facebook memorial page, it's possible to identify him. A neighbor told the Post the boy "was a little wild," and seemed "in search of a father figure," because his dad is in prison on drug charges." His mother tells the News, "My son is a good kid. He wouldn't hurt anyone."
The Booth family is preparing Kaitlin for burial, and her stepsister, Angela Nicastro, 29, tells the News, "Kaitlin was a straight-A student with a bright future and now it's gone. Everyone who knew her loved her. I can't tell you how much this hurts."
Tagged
accident
arrest
crash
Kaitlin Booth
memorial
suv
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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