As seven of the eight churchgoers struck Thursday night by an 18-year-old driver were released from the hospital on Friday, North Las Vegas police attention shifted to the whereabouts of the driver’s 1-year-old son.
The 18-year-old Utah woman told investigators Friday the baby is with his father in Las Vegas, which hasn’t been confirmed, police said. However, she told her mother earlier Thursday that she left the boy at a friend’s house in Arizona.
The mother of Nayakueth D. Tear, who faces eight charges of felony hit-and-run, said her daughter left home a week ago. Since then she’s talked to her daughter several times, asking each time whether the baby, Janub Isaiah Tear, was with her.
The last time the two spoke was Thursday night, about an hour before the 10:57 p.m. crash, the mother said. Her daughter called her from a different cellphone than her own, “sounded like herself,” and told her mother she planned to bring the baby home to Salt Lake City in two days.
The mother, a Sudanese immigrant, said she asked her daughter if she could talk to the baby and listen to his voice to make sure that he was with her.
“I asked if I could talk to him, and she said, ‘No, he’s sleeping,’” said Sarah Dak, the 39-year-old mother, in a telephone interview.
North Las Vegas Police spokesman Tim Bedwell said investigating officers found “absolutely no evidence” that a baby was “ever in the car” — a white 2000 Mitsubishi Galant, which Tear told police she’d been living in for a week.
“We just went over to the city jail where she is, and asked her about the baby, and she told us it’s with the father who lives in Las Vegas,” Bedwell said Friday. “Beyond that, she’s being absolutely uncooperative. The grandma needs to file a missing person’s report if she really thinks the child is in some sort of danger.”
The mother said she doesn’t know the name of the baby’s father, and that she’s the one who, for the most part, has raised him.
“Now I’m worried,” said the mother, who wasn’t aware of the collision until contacted by the Review-Journal. “My daughter is in jail, and I don’t know where the baby is.”
Seven of the eight victims injured in the collision have since been released from local hospitals, although a 54-year-old man remains in critical condition, police said.
The church-goers were hit as they were leaving a three-hour Spanish evangelical service and were returning to their parked cars in front of Igleisa de Cristo, in the 1900 block of Losee Road near Lake Mead Boulevard and Interstate 15.
The crash was captured by an auto repair shop’s surveillance camera. It shows the driver getting out of the car, examining the situation and leaving the scene.
Charges of DUI are pending a blood test, Bedwell said.
Eugene Adams, the owner of the auto repair shop across the street from the church, is calling it “a miracle” that nobody died. Tear must have been doing 30 mph, judging by the video, he said.
“She just came and mowed the people down like rag dolls. You could see people flying like crazy,” said Adams, adding, “I’m glad nobody died.”
Mario Butler, a mechanic at the repair shop, said the driver “plowed them down like it wasn’t nothing, like she was hitting a pole.”
A witness followed Tear after she hit the group of people, drove away, then fled on foot, police said. She was arrested near I-15. Losee Road dead ends near there.
The car has Utah license plates and is registered to someone else, police said. It had not been reported as stolen. Tear didn’t have a driver’s license and initially gave them a false name, police said.
Tear was arrested and charged with eight counts of felony hit-and-run, eight counts of gross misdemeanor failure to render aid to injured persons, and one count of obstructing a police officer by giving false information. In Utah, she also faces a charge of soliciting for prostitution after a July arrest.
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