Hours later, the aspiring 20-year-old artist lay in Cooper University Hospital, fighting for her life. She had severe head trauma and multiple fractures - to her nose, temple, neck, skull, jaw, and femur - after the Chevrolet hit her around 1 a.m. Friday.
On Friday, authorities had not found the driver of the Chevrolet Uplander, probably manufactured between 2005 and 2009. Police said they did not know the color of the minivan. It should be missing a grill, though. Louis Gattuso pleaded for the driver to come forward - and the witness who had asked for directions, too.
"If anybody knows anything . . . even that person who asked for directions," he said Friday in an interview from Cooper.
His daughter, he said, "always managed to see the good in everybody."
"Hopefully, who did this to her maybe has some type of compassion," he said.
Angela Gattuso, of Clarksboro, graduated from Gloucester Catholic High School in 2009. She has two jobs, at a nursery and a restaurant, and attends Gloucester County College, said her best friend, Gabrielle DiGiacomo, 20, of Brooklawn.
Gattuso, DiGiacomo, and two others were close to DiGiacomo's home in Brooklawn when Gattuso's red Honda SUV hit railroad tracks early Friday. Something was grinding under her car.
At 12:13 a.m., she called her father, who runs Gattuso's Auto Service, a family business in Clarksboro.
DiGiacomo walked to her own home nearby, got her car, and pulled behind Gattuso, and they waited with the hazard lights of both cars on.
Louis Gattuso got there at 12:40. DiGiacomo and two friends who were waiting left when he arrived.
He started to load her SUV on the tow truck. A car drove past the two of them and pulled in front at the roadside. A short, thin woman with cropped hair got out. She walked back to Gattuso's disabled car.
