Bride of victim killed in Hudson Parkway crash pleas for help to find wrong-way driver
Mayor Adams is personally offering a $1,000 reward to help find the driver
WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, Manhattan (WABC) -- New York City Mayor Eric Adams is offering a reward to find the wrong-way driver responsible for a crash on the Henry Hudson Parkway that killed a groom and his cousin a day before the wedding.
On Tuesday, Mayor Adams described the deadly crash as a Shakespearean tragedy after he spoke to the victim's family.
One victim was a groom about to get married surrounded by a loving family. The other was his cousin, and the driver who killed them fled following the crash.
"I had to live the tragedy," said Khadija Walker, the sister and cousin of the crash victims.
Walker lost both her brother and cousin Saturday morning, and she was only a few cars behind theirs when it was hit by a pickup truck going the wrong way.
"They don't know what any of us felt that night when we all had to pick up my cousin's body and move him away from the burning car." Walker said.
She could feel the heat from the flames as she gave her cousin, Todd McLaurin, CPR.
"Huge black smoke and traffic is stopping. And you're not understanding why," she said. And you're walking over glass and doors and the air bags and the oil, you slip because you couldn't barely even get to them because there was so much oil on the ground."
Kirk Walker's bride, Shauntea Weaver is finding the strength in her broken heart to ask anyone who knows something to speak up.
"I want them to understand exactly the two lives that they ended because of reckless stupidity," she said. "And then to flee the scene after you do something like that is just inhumane."
She got a hint of reassurance on Tuesday from City Hall.
"We are going to find the person involved," Mayor Adams said. "I'm asking New Yorkers if you know any information that can lead to apprehending this person who appears to have left the scene. I'm going to put up $1,000 of my own personal money to call for the arrest and conviction of this person."
The families held a vigil over the weekend, and are planning funerals now instead of the joy-filled wedding they were planning for the last year.
Looking at the dresses and tux the couple will never get to celebrate in, Weaver says the support from her fiancé's friends and colleagues has been comforting.
"They call me and they text me and they say, how much of an impact Kirk has left on them and how sad they are and how much they just want to help," Weaver said.
The best help the families can hope for is a little closure.
"If you know anything, if you saw anything while we were on the highway, while you were in traffic on the other side. Just speak up," Walker said.
"If you know something, say something. Please," Weaver said.
The passenger from that pickup truck that caused that terrible crash was apprehended, but the driver is the one still on the loose. The NYPD would like to hear from you if you know who and where that person is.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help support the family of the victims.
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