Catarina Reymundo Marcos was dead by the time her baby was born.
Marcos, 34, was standing behind a minivan Tuesday in West Palm Beach when the driver plowed over her and her toddler and took off. She was pronounced dead at St. Mary’s Medical Center, where her unborn baby was delivered by C-section a short time later.
The newborn and the toddler, Jessica Guzman, remain hospitalized in critical condition as police search for the unknown driver.
“These children did not deserve this,” said Daniel Dillard, a traffic homicide investigator for the West Palm Beach Police Department.
Police say the crash happened about 3 p.m. Tuesday in the 3800 block of Pinewood Avenue, just east of U.S. 1 and north of downtown.
The driver reversed her 2001 Honda Odyssey out of a driveway, hit Marcos and her child, crashed into a parked car, drove through a front yard and sped off.
Police believe the driver knew Marcos, but they’re not sure how.
Investigators have found the van they think was involved in the crash. The license plate had been removed.
Police released a copy of a passport they found in the van, belonging to the van’s owner, Priscila Nicolas Antonio, 39, a citizen of Guatemala. Police said she is not a suspect, but a person of interest.
It’s not uncommon for C-sections to be done on pregnant women who’ve been killed in crashes, according to the National Institutes of Health, which calls the procedure “uncomplicated.”
Some babies survive, although some die within days.
Dillard, the police investigator, called the crash “heartbreaking and heart-wrenching.”
“It just motivates me now to go 150% into this to find the person responsible for this, for the children,” he said.
Anyone with information is urged to call the West Palm Beach Police Department at 561-822-1900.
Austen Erblat can be reached at aerblat@sunsentinel.com, 954-599-8709 or on Twitter @AustenErblat.
Correction: An earlier version of this news article misspelled the name of a pregnant woman who died.
