Toddler dies, mom injured by hit-run driver in South Philly

The father of 2-year-old Derrick Martinez, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver Saturday in South Philadelphia, was too distraught to speak yesterday, but his neighbor can't forget the last words she heard him say.

"The father was just there holding his son's hand, saying 'Come back to me. Please come back,' " Kimberly Washington said.

But the toddler never did.

The youngster was pronounced dead at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia at 9:04 p.m., just a half-hour after he and his mother, Dionisa Leone, 20, were struck by an unidentified driver as they crossed Washington Avenue near 6th Street to get to their house.

The driver, in a late-model, four-door Mercedes Benz with tinted windows and chrome wheels, fled the scene and has yet to be found, police said.

Police said that Leone was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in critical condition with leg and internal injuries, but family members said that she was recovering at home yesterday.

Pilar Perez, who said she is a cousin of Derrick's father, said there were few words to describe the situation.

"There is just God," she said. "He just know what to do with him."

Washington, a local committeewoman, said that although she did not witness the crash, she did rush outside in the aftermath, while Derrick and his mother were unconscious and CPR was being administered.

"When I got down there, the sight was just too much for me to stand and bear," she said.

She asked the driver to think of his or her own child and turn themselves in to police.

"And if you don't have a child on this earth, think of the closest child to you and think of their mother and what they would have to live through," she said.

Anyone with information on the hit-and-run is urged to call the police department's Accident Investigation Division at 215-685-3180.