A fatal hit-and-run crash has left two East Bay families grieving and with a lot of questions about how it happened.
“She loved everybody as her kids,” said Laquesha Carr, 67-year-old Vera Hampton’s daughter.
Hampton and her fiance, 64-year-old Derrick Shaw had recently been engaged.
And since she was suffering from a sore tooth, Vera texted a picture and a note to her family Sunday morning as they drove into Oakland.
“She said, ‘morning I might not, can’t talk, but I can still bless his name. On my way to church to pray and be blessed. Love you both,’” said Carr.
Minutes later, as Shaw rounded the corner left off of 73rd Avenue onto Holly Street, just blocks from church, they were hit broadside by a stolen Lexus G350 traveling at a high speed.
“I guess he was trying to get away from the police, and he ran into my mom. They were on their way to church,” said Carr.
“She was the pillar of this family,” said Mel Dennis, Hampton’s granddaughter. “It definitely feels like a bad dream, for real. Especially, since she just texted us that morning. It’s like, the final text, like she was just in such a good place. She was just so happy. She just kept saying that she was happy.”
Their car was hit so hard, OPD says it rolled into another parked car and Hampton and Shaw both died in the crash.
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Their close friend, who was in the back seat, was rushed to the hospital.
Hampton’s granddaughters, who live very close to the fatal crash scene, says the whole thing is still numbing and surreal.
“My kids go to school down the street. I live down the street from where you all took my grandma from, and I have to go back home,” said Marquesha Cosby, Hampton’s granddaughter.
The 25-year-old driver of the stolen Lexus was arrested nearby and charged in the hit-and-run collision. But the family questions why he was driving so fast through a residential neighborhood.
They want to know if police were in pursuit and if so, why.
OPD is only supposed to pursue if the suspect committed a violent crime or used a gun in a crime.
“Just because you’re trying to get a criminal, they’re taking other people’s lives. They need to come up with another plan about how they’re pursuing people,” said Carr.
A spokesman for OPD says the crash is still under investigation, and right now the agency does not have any information indicating there was a pursuit.
He says if anyone witnessed a chase or has video of it, he wants them to contact police.
