A hit-and-run driver killed a woman in Hollywood on Sunday, and her husband is now demanding justice while police continue their search for the driver.
La Verne cops say the accident happened on Sunset Boulevard just before 9 p.m. Erika, whose family and friends called her “Tilly,” is said to have died after being hit by a blue Mercedes-Benz G Wagon.
The driver didn’t stop to help; instead, he kept going south on Gardner Street as they ran away.
Kris Edwards spoke from the garden of the house he and his wife Erika had just bought last week. “She didn’t deserve any of this; she deserves so much better,” he said.
Edwards said that his wife sent him their last text message at 8:59 p.m. At 10 p.m., he started calling her because he hadn’t heard from her.
He claims that he called several times but got no answer. He then began to look at her shared location on his phone to try to figure out where she was. It took about two hours for her phone to show that it was in the same place, even though she was meant to be home from a fundraiser for the LGBTQ Center where she did pole dancing.
He texted one of Erika’s dance students to see if they were still together, but they told him she had already left. He says that’s when he realized something bad had happened.
“That’s when you know for sure.” “I knew because she would always answer,” he said.
He drove down to Sunset Boulevard to see what was going on, but there was yellow tape around Sunset Boulevard and Gardner Street. At that very moment, he heard a group of people talking about a woman who had been killed by a driver who didn’t stop.
“The phone starts to move, and I see her little dot moving across the screen, and it pulls into the Wendy’s parking lot on Sunset just before you get to Highland,” Edwards said. “And I’m walking around the parking lot looking for her car and I don’t see it, so I start looking in all the windows to see if maybe she rode with somebody.”
He still couldn’t find his eight-year-old wife. He saw the Medical Examiner’s car in the drive-thru and went up to them.
“Excuse me, sir, I knock on his window and say. Is my wife’s phone in your car? “He looks at me and tells me to get in the truck,” Edwards said.
The driver took him to talk to two LAPD officers, who told him the sad news. It was likely Erika who was waiting at the door of her car for the car to pass before she was hit and dragged more than 160 feet down the street.
He said, “That’s how I found out.”
“When I met her, I knew instantly that I wanted to propose to her,” said he. “My mom told me love is strange when I told her. It can’t be measured and it’s not limited. You just know when you know it. The other end of it made me feel the same way: like I knew she was gone. I have no words to describe how it feels when the world gets darker. I already knew who the coroner was, so I didn’t need to look for them.
The LAPD is still looking for the suspect, and Edwards hopes that people will remember his wife the way he does.
She taught me how to do things out of love, not because someone else wants them. She was interested in art and beauty just for the fun of it. “She made everything clear to me,” he said. “She made me into the loving, accepting human I am.”
He sent the driver a message too, telling them to turn themselves in.
“Please come in.” Do it for her dad, not for me. He had to tell me that I had her for 12 years, but he’s had her her whole life and she’s his daughter,” Edwards said. “He needs closure.”
Family friends have set up an online fundraiser to help Edwards get through this tough time. Looking for “Assist Kris in Erika’s Final Farewell” on GoFundMe will help you find it.
