DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Linda Falayi, 68, was walking across the street on Monday evening on her way home from work, as her kids say she's done for years, when she was struck by a car.
The impact threw her 60 feet to a sidewalk, police said, and killed her just days before her kids said she was planning to host Thanksgiving dinner.
The driver never stopped.
"I can barely hit a squirrel without stopping, like 'oh my God,' any kind of animal," said Shaquetta Brooks, the daughter of Falayi, a mother of four adult children and grandmother to 11. "And you just treat my mom less than that."
According to police, Falayi had just gotten off a bus coming home from work on Monday night, sometime between 7-8 p.m, and was crossing the street at Young Road and Covington Highway.
Police are looking for a 2015-2018 Hyundai Genesis G 80 in connection to the hit-and-run. They said it has front end damage offset towards the passenger side and may have both front bumper damage and damage to the passenger side headlight.
Falayi's family pleaded for the driver of that vehicle to turn themselves in during a press conference on Wednesday.
"Seeing her, it was horrific accident, so they know they need to come forward because if it was their loved ones they would want the same justice," Brooks said. "You could've just stopped, you know, you could've just stopped and just waited. That's the part that's getting to us the most, because we lost our mom in that way, and they could've just stopped for her."
"Just stop. Because she's loved, she will be missed, she has family - she just wasn't nobody," the daughter added.
So far details have been scarce, though it was said there might have been a rare vehicle involved in the hit-and-run.
At the press conference, three of Falayi's children - Brooks, her eldest son Xavier Greer and her other daughter Latesa Grier - as well as a grandson, Jarquavious Grier, all expressed their grief.
They described her as a "beautiful person" taken far too soon.
"Parents raise the children and then the children take care of the parents, and you don't think about losing your mom at 68 to something like this," Brooks said. "You think about if she was ill or she was sick and unhealthy, you know, when your parents get older those are things you think about - illness and natural causes."
"This is horrific, and she was just taken from us too early," she added.
Brooks said her mother was born and raised in Atlanta, and was dedicated to her job at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Downtown. She'd tried to get her to retire, she said, but Falayi "never wanted to sit still."
"It's horrific, definitely heartless, because for anyone, anybody's parent, loved one, you don't want them to go that way," she said. "And you know we do have a law here that says stop, just pull over and stop and call authorities. And that's all we wanted just someone to stop for her."
"Because you know she's a mom, she's a grandmother, she's an aunt, she has family, people who love her," Brooks added. "And we loved her dearly."
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