Hit-and-Run-and-Hide

The Innocent Victim


The Alleged Perpetrator

REBECCA BARGER / Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer

"The real significance of a crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind." Joseph Conrad

What kind of person hits someone with a car and runs away? What in God's name goes through a driver's mind after that sickening thud -- a sound it's said--even if you've never heard it before--you instantly recognize as car-on-body?

The kind of person who does such a thing is Scum. Period. And if that person is drunk or high, then scum is too nice a word. Or, as may be the case here in Philadelphia, if the car owner is protecting the real offender, they're both maggots. Scum-sucking maggots.

In case you haven't guessed, this kind of behavior--this particular crime--fills me with disgust and intense, blind anger. It's senseless. Pointless. And totally, completely avoidable. Road rage by testosterone-driven idiots is bad enough with its aggressive, outrageous stupidity. But when supposedly ordinary people get into their cars too distracted or tired or--worse, much worse--impaired to pay adequate attention to the road, people get killed. In this case, a child. As far as I'm concerned, they should be taken out back and shot.

On June 19, local restaurant owner Susanna Goihman's Lexus struck and killed 15-year-old Kayla Peter as she was walking from a bus stop to her home just yards away. No one has yet identified the driver, but three days later, when Ms. Giohman admitted to police it was her car, no arrest was made. And Goihman ran away to Florida to hide out with her mother. Local residents began protest vigils outside Goiman's home and business. It's taken police over two months to make enough of a case to arrest Goihman, and now the hoopla really begins.

Goihman surrendered to police today wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. Dan Rubin of Blinq quotes various local Bloggers' outrage at the fact--deliberate or not--that Ms. Goihman would dare to appear in public sporting the image of the dead victim's high school mascot. Others mirror my own feeling that it was just plain bad taste to go before a judge in such a disrespectful outfit. Regardless, it only highlights the fact that Ms. Goihman has apparently no scruples about what she wears or does.

Rather than obsess on her fashion crimes, though, I say we focus our outrage where it belongs: somebody in Goihman's car hit Kayla Peter hard enough to kill her -- and ran away. Goihman claims innocence, but won't name the driver. All her lawyer said was, "It's a terrible intersection, across from a bus stop. It's very dark. It's certainly a place where other accidents have occurred."

Well. If that's her defense, it sucks. Just as her behavior has done for even longer. Goihman's already on probation for a drunken driving arrest. Her license was suspended for two months, but we don't know whether that suspension was already in force when her car killed Kayla Peter on June 19.

So was Goihman behind the wheel of her car or not? When questioned by reporters, Philly DA Lynne Abraham implied she was. "I, as a prosecutor, would never charge anybody with an offense we're not prepared to prove."

The current charge against Goihman is leaving the scene of a fatal accident, a third-degree felony, with a mandatory minimum of one year in prison and a maximum prison sentence of seven years. My first thought was HUH? One to seven years for snuffing out a 15-year-old life?

DA Abraham said the charge was filed to make sure Goihman, who's a native of Venezuela, would not flee the country. A grand jury investigation is underway which could return more serious charges. How about Criminal Negligence? Vehicular Murder? Excessive Evil?

Lynne Abraham has been around the block and then some. She's a Very tough cookie who's been known to make hardened criminals crumble. I'm glad she's on Kayla Peter's side -- surely the side of the angels. Let's hope she gets the goods on Suzanne Goihman, but good.