Family In Agony As Police Vow Not To Give Up Hunt For Killer Hit & Run Driver

“I can’t talk, I can’t talk, I cant talk.”

The anguished words of Maria Maldonado, as she contemplates the idea that her son will never be coming home.

Andres Maldonado, a 19-year-old with a promising future took a terrible chance and it cost him everything. The Brampton teen, all dressed in black, tried to cross against a red light in the stormy and unsettled gloom of Sunday morning, when he was hit by a car along Highway 27 and Humber College Blvd.

The impact of that collision sent him spinning into another vehicle, and the young adult never had a chance. He died at the scene.

But his tragic story is made even worse because while the first driver stopped, the second kept going. And police still haven’t found that person. 

The death is hard enough to take. The fact someone could have aided the victim but didn’t  makes them furious.

“[I’m] angry,” seethes Carolina Maldonado, Andres’ sister. “Why would you just leave somebody there? Why couldn’t you just help him?”

The irony is the driver in question wasn’t at fault in the accident and likely wouldn’t have been charged if he’d stopped.

“I will guarantee you that the driver knew they hit something, whether they knew they hit someone at the time, that’s for him and his higher power, I guess,” surmises Det. Paul Lobsinger.

“He certainly with all the media coverage, the newspapers, the radio, the television, he certainly knows someone was hit and killed at that intersection and it’s time to come and make it right.”

The circumstances of the chain reaction collision explain why the motorist may not have known about the impact at first.

“We know that Andres was hit by a first vehicle that spun him out and that’s how he landed in the lane where the suspect auto that fled, that’s how that auto hit him, and he was laying down on the roadway at the time,” Lobsinger adds. “That’s why this driver may not have known at the time that it was a person.

“So the damage here is going to be low on the car, under the body.”

The Brampton resident’s clothes have been submitted for forensic testing, hoping paint from the vehicle will help cops reach new conclusions about the kind of model they’re looking for.

But Lobsinger wants to correct one important misconception.

“We are looking for champagne-coloured, gold-coloured, maybe beige-coloured small North American-type car. I know in some media reports and in some printed papers, it was listed as a Grand Am …   We don’t want to limit this to a Grand Am because we don’t know if it was a Grand Am.”

But he warns the longer it takes to find the suspect, the harder it will be for that person.

And it’s already hard for the family, who have only come forward to appeal to the driver to do the right thing.

“Whoever did it, please, can you show your face?” the distraught mother pleads. “You have to, you know, be responsible for the things that we do. I know it’s an accident, but you have to be at least facing this thing. You know how much pain — you hurt me.”

Carolina knows the family’s lives have been changed forever. “There’s just an emptiness in our house, an emptiness in our hearts,” she confirms.  

If you think you know who was behind the wheel, call Traffic Services at (416) 808-1900.