A Harlem man was arrested for fatally mowing down a 3-year-old girl as she crossed a Manhattan street with her mother and siblings in July, cops said.
Devon Joseph, 41, was arrested Friday morning and charged with motor vehicle fail to yield to pedestrian for the July 11 collision, cops said. He was issued a desk appearance ticket for the charge, prosecutors said.
Little Jaynelyse Valdez was headed to Harlem Hospital with her 37-year-old mother and two brothers, ages 2 and 4 months, to visit their terminally ill aunt in the ICU, with a home-cooked meal in hand for other visitors, according to an online fundraiser created by the family.
The family was crossing the street, steps away from the hospital when Joseph, driving a Nissan Pathfinder, heading south on Lenox Ave., made a left onto W. 135th St. barrelling into them in the crosswalk at about 7:40 p.m., cops said. Both Joseph and Jaynelyse’s family had green lights, cops said.
“The guy who hit her picked her up and brought her into the hospital,” a witness said of Joseph at the time. “He was with his family, but he was not going to leave her.”
Despite the quick treatment she received, Jaynelyse couldn’t be saved.
“It was terrible,” said the witness. “That poor baby and her mother. She was hysterical.”
Joseph also struck the girl’s 2-year-old brother, Jonvier, but he only suffered a bump to the head, family said. Her mother and baby brother were not struck.
After rushing the child to the hospital, Joseph remained at the scene.
Jaynelyse was just days away from celebrating her birthday when she was killed, heartbroken relatives said.
“She was gonna be 4 on the 15th,” little Jaynelyse’s paternal grandmother Kenya previously said from their home in New Rochelle. “She was so happy, so smart, so caring.”
Kenya, 52, said her granddaughter was mature for her age.
“Jaynelyse was an old lady in the body of a little girl,” she said. “She started taking at 7 months or so.”
Her first word was “Mama,” Kenya recalled somberly.
“There’s no words,” the little girl’s dazed father said at the time. “There’s no words for it.”