MIAMI – Traffic homicide detectives spent time Wednesday knocking on doors and speaking with neighbors in the area where they found a suspicious car believed to have been involved in a fatal hit-and-run crash over the weekend.
The Toyota Corolla with heavy front-end damage — a broken headlight and a smashed windshield — is being processed for physical evidence while investigators question the car’s owner.
Local 10 News has been told lab results are pending on traces of evidence collected from the damaged car.
Nearly a mile away from where the car was found is the crime scene where the body of 16-year old Diani Gomez Sanchez was found Sunday.
The teen left home early Saturday morning for a run and never returned.
Worried family members searched the area just off the 79th Street Causeway and discovered the girl’s remains in bushes.
Neighbors in the area where the car was found Tuesday say the Toyota’s damage was recent.
“With the flat tire, it was sitting there for like two days,” neighbor Tonya Sawyer said. “Yesterday morning I seen him I guess trying to fix his tire on the car. After that, he left and I was I out here walking my dog yesterday morning and I came back I seen the car parked on the side.”
Sawyer says she sees the man and his car all the time. But only after detectives flooded the block on Northeast Bayshore Court on Tuesday did she learn of the criminal investigation underway.
A puzzling situation for people who live so close, forced to watch the investigation play out.
“First of all, you don’t hit someone and then walk away,” one neighbor said. “Stay there.”
The victim’s family tells Local 10 News that investigators notified them that a possible vehicle connected to the crash has been found. No arrests have been announced.
Detectives are asking anyone with info about the hit-and-run crash to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.