Hit-And-Run Driver Says Bottle On Floor Had Distracted Him Before Accident

Hundreds of mourners filed into the Most Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in East Hampton on Tuesday afternoon to pay their respects to the 36-year-old Amagansett mother who was killed when she was struck by a car last week while pushing her two young children in a stroller.

In family photos, Yuris Murillo Cruz smiles while clutching her children or in the arms of her husband, Wilson. On Tuesday, tears streamed down the faces of friends and family as she was laid to rest.

Ms. Murillo Cruz died en route to the hospital following the accident, just before noon on January 13. Her two children, ages 1 and 4, were airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital hospital, but did not suffer life-threatening injuries and were both discharged over the weekend, according to a family friend.

The driver of the car that struck the three as they walked home on the shoulder of Montauk Highway from the Amagansett School, where Ms. Murillo-Cruz’s daughter goes to school, fled the scene, sparking an hours long search by police.

The suspected vehicle — a red 1997 Dodge pickup truck with one white bumper — was located by police a short time later, abandoned on a road near the beach in Napeague, but there were no signs of the driver. A Suffolk County Police Department helicopter and K-9 team were called in to help with the search, which ranged across Napeague to Hither Hills.

It turned out that the driver, Mark A. Corrado Jr., 28, had used the Uber app on his phone to hire a car to drive him back to his home in West Babylon in western Suffolk County. He called East Hampton Town Police from his home to confess to the incident and was instructed to turn himself in at a Suffolk County Police Department precinct, which he did at about 5 p.m.

East Hampton Town Police Captain Chris Anderson said it appeared the only reason he had fled from the scene was that “he panicked.”

In a hand-written confession to given to East Hampton Town Police Detective Ryan Hogan at the county police precinct on the evening of the crash, Mr. Corrado said that shortly before the accident another car in front of him had stopped abruptly, forcing him to slam on his breaks and a bottle of water had rolled off the seat and onto the floor of his truck. As he accelerated back to highway speed, he wrote, he reached down to get the bottle off the floor and took his eyes off the road for a moment.

When he looked back up he “immediately made contact with something,” he said.

“I looked in my passenger side mirror and saw clothes,” he wrote. “I couldn’t make out a body [but] I saw objects, materials and papers. I at this point assumed I hit a person.”

He said he turned his truck down Bunker Hill Road, just east of the accident site. He made a u-turn on the dead end road and when he got back to the intersection with the highway and looked west he saw other vehicles stopped to help “whoever I hit.”

In his confession he then claims he panicked and made the decision to turn left onto the highway and head east, rather than back to the accident scene.

After finding is way to a stretch of Gilbert’s Path where there are no houses, he pulled his truck off the road and parked it. He paged an Uber driver with his phone and gathered up all the identifying documents out of the vehicle — which he said he had borrowed from a friend —and removed the license plates. He said he noticed that the front right bumper was dented.

As he waited for the Uber to arrive, he said, he heard the police sirens and the helicopter that took the Murillo Cruz children to the hospital.

The ride back to his home took more than an hour, he said. Along the way he realized the airbags in his truck had “burned” his hands and legs. He says he took a shower and then “sat on my bed and decided to call East Hampton police to turn myself in.”

Mr. Corrado was arraigned virtually on Thursday morning by East Hampton Town Justice Lisa Rana and was released on his own recognizance, as dictated by state law.

Currently he is only charged with leaving the scene of an accident that involved a fatality, a felony, and the most serious level of charges related to leaving the scene of an accident. If convicted, he faces up to seven years in prison.

Police have not indicated that there is any evidence Mr. Corrado was intoxicated at the time of the crash, though he admits in his confession that he had smoked a part of a marijuana “blunt” the night before and “took a hit” of the leftovers when he got home after the accident, which he said he quickly realized “was a stupid decision” considering his plan to turn himself in.

“I can’t believe this happened,” Nicolasa Avelvo, a family friend, said the day after the accident as she and two other friends hung a wreath on a telephone pole a few feet from where Ms. Murillo Cruz died. “She was so young.”

Ms. Avelvo said that Ms. Murillo Cruz, who is originally from El Salvador, and her husband, Wilson, have lived in East Hampton Town for 20 years.

Ms. Murillo Cruz had just picked up her daughter, Michelle from the half-day pre-k program at Amagansett School and was walking back to the small apartment the family rents near Bunker Hill Road.

The day after the accident, Amagansett School Superintendent Seth Turner visited the site with family friends.

“The whole school community has been affected by this,” Mr. Turner said on Thursday while visiting the site of the accident with Mr. Murillo-Cruz’s friends. “We will do everything we can to support the family.”

The Amagansett PTA has set up a GoFundMe account to help pay for the children’s medical expenses and the funeral that, as of this Tuesday, had raised more than $113,000. A second fund-raiser set up by friends of the family to help pay for funeral expenses has raised more than $83,000.

“We are a small community, and we need to help support one another — especially during such an agonizing time for the Murillo Cruz family,” the Amagansett PTA’s appeal said. “We are incredibly grateful for all donations — no matter how small, and your help will make a tremendous difference in the lives of Murillo Cruz family.”

Family friend Angelica Marta said that Mr. Murillo and his children are still struggling come to terms with the tragedy

“He is truly grateful and touched by the outreach of the community, friends and family,” Ms. Marta said. “All he wants is his wife back and his children to be okay. We know it will take time to heal and cope.”