SUV hits pedestrians in Hempstead, kills woman, police say

An SUV struck a group of people arguing on a Hempstead Village street Wednesday afternoon, killing a woman, in a case that homicide detectives are still trying to piece together, authorities said.

The woman, 56, was declared dead at the Linden Avenue scene, and two women and a man were injured and taken to a hospital, Nassau police said. One person was released by Thursday morning; police did not have details on the extent of the other victims’ injuries.

The sport utility vehicle came around a bend on Linden Avenue just before 5 p.m. and struck the group and a vehicle parked nearby, Nassau and Hempstead Village police said.

The SUV was halfway on the curb, a crumpled bicycle under its front bumper, before a Nassau police flatbed truck lifted the vehicle early Thursday so officers could pull the bike out.

Police on Thursday did not release other details, including the identity of the woman who died and whether the SUV driver stayed at the scene or was charged.

After officers left and the SUV was taken away about at 1 a.m., a Linden Avenue resident who witnessed the collision shouted out her frustrations into the dark, deserted street.

“Stop the violence, please,” said Frances Limehouse, 50, tears staining her cheeks.

She said the woman who died was her brother’s fiancee.

Limehouse said she was in the front yard of her nearby home when she heard people arguing late Wednesday afternoon before the crash. She ran to the scene and saw her future sister-in-law on the street, bleeding from the head but still conscious, Limehouse said.

As she cradled the injured woman in her arms, Limehouse recalled, the victim’s last words were, “Tell mommy I love her.”

Limehouse said she called the woman’s 70-year-old mother to tell her the news.

When the SUV hit the woman, according to Limehouse, she was attempting to break up a fight.

“Breaking up a fight. Dead,” Limehouse said loudly, a makeshift memorial and a medic’s blue gloves by her feet.

Limehouse had taken a bedsheet from her home and used it to cover bloodstains on the street. She then put six candles — just one of them lit — on top of the bedsheet in tribute to the woman who died.

“If you lit a candle for everyone who died on this street,” said a visibly angry Limehouse, “it would be a whole nation on this block.”

With Gary Dymski