A 66-year-old woman is dead after a hit-and run involving a known gang member, police said.
Margaret Hall died in the 200 block of Mount Street moments after her car was struck by a speeding car driven a man trying to flee police.
"I looked in the rearview mirror and I saw the car coming down Mount street and she was coming down Pratt Street," witness, Tiffany Slaughter, told ABC2.
Police said Ryan Hazel, a Bloods gang member, was behind the wheel of the speeding car that hit Hall’s car in the 200 block of Mount Street late Thursday night.
Slaughter continued, "It was a real bad crash because she died instantly. But it was real unfortunate because no one ever thinks like, today I'm going to die."
Margaret Hall died at the scene of the crash. "She never had a chance," Davis said.
Officers responding to an unrelated traffic stop were able to take Hazel into custody. They recovered drugs and a semi-automatic pistol with a 50 round capacity drum from his car.
Davis expressed frustration that Hazel was even on the street due to a 2015 gun conviction that should have kept him locked up for three years. He called the gun found in Hazel’s car “a weapon of death,” that was “possessed by someone who should have been in jail, but he wasn’t in jail because two years and 6 months of his three year sentence was suspended.”
“I’m shaking my head at with the community at that one. I don’t understand it.,” he continued.
Court records show Hazel was arrested three times since his release, including one arrest for gun possession.
"You can walk down the street and anybody can be anything but it makes me cautious to where I want to have my children, where I want to stay, what environment I'm in," Slaughter said.
