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Police seek car involved in Kensington hit-and-run

Bundled and alone on Christmas night, the woman was lying in the street by the entrance to a desolate Family Dollar store parking lot in Kensington.

Bundled and alone on Christmas night, the woman was lying in the street by the entrance to a desolate Family Dollar store parking lot in Kensington.

A man smoking a cigarette from his second-floor apartment window spotted her sprawled a few feet off the curb. She looked sick or debilitated, perhaps unconscious. Out of cellphone minutes, the man, a retired taxi driver named Mike, called out to a few others on the quiet Frankford Avenue sidewalk to call 911.

"She'll freeze," he shouted.

But there was no time.

Moments later, about 10 minutes past 8, a black, tinted-out Dodge Charger turned into the otherwise-empty parking lot, running over the woman, according to police and witnesses.

After striking her, the car then reversed over the woman, who was said to be 53 but whose identity police had yet to release Wednesday.

One witness, Zayda Hammond, 24, said he called for the driver to stop.

The driver, described by witnesses as a Hispanic woman in her 40s, pulled over and walked toward the victim. But then she quickly got back into her car and fled.

Witnesses said a man and woman waiting for their Christmas supper at the New Pizza Palace rushed to comfort the injured woman, who died from head injuries at Temple University Hospital.

Police were still trying to contact the victim's relatives Wednesday, a police spokeswoman said.

On Frankford Avenue on Wednesday morning, witnesses and residents stood in the snow and rain and said they did not know the victim's name.

Residents of a halfway house said they did not know who the woman could be; the doors of the Cornerstone Community Church, down the street from where the woman died, were shut.

The store had closed at 4 p.m. on Christmas, about four hours before the woman was struck.

Store employees said they did not recall seeing a woman in the parking lot at closing time.

Police have one solid lead on the driver.

Surveillance footage from Chuckle's Bar, just down Frankford at Clearfield Street, captured images of the black Dodge idling outside the bar before driving toward the store. After striking the victim, the car was last seen driving on the nearby 2000 block of Wishart Street, police said.

The license plate number was not visible, but investigators are working to enhance the video, according to an an Accident Investigation District officer.

The regulars inside Chuckle's said they did not know the identity of the victim either.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Accident Investigation District at 215-685-3180 or -3181.