HIT AND RUN DRIVER KEEPS GOING WITH DYING VICTIM ON HOOD OF CAR

From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Injury Lawyer)

A hit-and-run driver slammed into a disabled grandmother in East Harlem yesterday - and sped off with the mortally wounded woman's body splayed on his hood for two blocks, police said.

A limping Ilia Lopez, 58, was struck at E. 121st St. at Second Ave. about 4:05 a.m. by a dark sedan, cops said. There were more than a dozen horrified witnesses.

"The way he hit her, you could never hear her scream," said witness Marilyn Baretto. "It was a crash like two cars hit." With Lopez's body on his hood, the driver sped south and turned left on E. 120th St. It wasn't until the driver reached First Ave. that her body rolled off the car, cops said.

Lopez was crossing Second Avenue in front of the clinic when a black sedan that looked like a livery cab hit her head-on, witnesses said.

"He was going at more than 35 mph," said Eric Puello, 42, also a patient at the clinic.

Lopez was rushed to Harlem Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

"I'd like to get behind the wheel and do to him what he did to my wife," fumed Lopez's husband, Juan Rojas. "She was a good woman, a good mother and a good wife." "He just left her there as if she was a dog," said Rojas, who lived with her in the Norwood section of The Bronx.

"I'm sure the driver does not have a mother. That's how I feel," said Rojas, 77, who phoned Lopez's three grown children to tell them of the tragedy.

Lopez, a mother of three adult children from the Bronx, had trekked to Harlem to pick up methadone from a clinic close to the scene of the crash, her pals said. She had been crossing the street to retrieve a milk crate to sit on while she waited for Harlem East Life Plan's 6 a.m. opening.