An unlicensed driver police say fatally struck a mother and her two children in Brooklyn — telling medics she was “possessed” — has been charged with manslaughter in the horrific crash just months after the wig-making social media influencer won a $2 million lawsuit against the NYPD.
Audi driver Miriam Yarimi had a suspended license when she got behind the wheel Saturday afternoon, police said. She was charged Saturday night with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, assault, reckless driving, aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, failure to yield to a red light and speeding, cops said.
Yarimi, 32, was headed north on Ocean Parkway in Midwood when she collided with a 2023 Toyota Camry with TLC plates making a right turn off Quinten Rd., sparking a crash that Mayor Adams, at a news conference, called a “tragic, tragic accident of Shakespearean proportion” as the family walked home from synagogue.
Yarimi then careened into the crosswalk, hitting a 35-year-old Natasha Saada and her three young children, police said. The mom and her two daughters, Deborah, 5, and Diana, 8, were rushed to Maimonides Medical Center but couldn’t be saved, cops said.
Saada’s 4-year-old son was taken to the same hospital, where he remained in critical condition Sunday.
Following the crash, Yarimi told Hatzalah medics she was “possessed” and claimed the CIA had been following her, according to law enforcement sources.
Video posted on social media shows the moment when the Saada family, who apparently have the light, walk across Ocean Parkway, as the Camry stops in front of them.
Just before they reach the median, Yarimi’s Audi blasts through the intersection, slamming into the back of the Camry and ramming the mom and her children.
In spine-chilling video of the crash aftermath viewed by the Daily News, debris litters the street as bystanders desperately perform chest compressions on two young children. The camera pans to Yarimi’s overturned car, where a lifeless body is pinned beneath it.
Screams echo through the chaos, and car horns blare as medics rush to the scene, wheeling a gurney out of an ambulance. A bystander urgently cautions another to avoid moving Yarimi from the front seat of her car.
Amid the panic, a man screams, “I’ve got a four-year-old!” before the video abruptly stops.
Yarimi’s Audi, which sports the vanity plate “WIGM8KER,” overturned in the crash, landing upside down. First responders had to extricate Yarimi from the luxury sedan before taking her to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn in stable condition.
“It’s a very sensitive time for us, for our community and for our family,” one relative told the Daily News. “We do appreciate the outreach.”
At a memorial on Sunday in Borough Park, hundreds of mourners flooded the street as they slowly trickled in and out of the Jewish Orthodox funeral home Shomrei Hadas Chapels.
“Shabbat is what she loved and Shabbat is when she left,” said a rabbi addressing the grief-stricken crowd. “She went out with Shabbat.”
Also on Sunday, a member of Saada’s Jewish community offered prayers on Instagram for her surviving child.
“Let us come together to beg for the recovery of Pinhas Refael ben Sarah, a young boy who desperately needs our collective prayers,” Rachel Ostroy wrote.
Mayor Adams visited the family Sunday, telling Saada’s husband, “I just had to be here, you know, as one dad to another dad,” according to Yeshiva World News.
Yarimi, a custom wig seller and influencer with a following on Instagram and TikTok, posed with her Audi in an August 2023 Instagram post.
The car has racked up nearly $11,000 in traffic and parking violations, including 21speed camera tickets and five red light tickets, according to data on howsmydrivingny.nyc.
Yarimi won a $2 million settlement from the city in December after she filed a lawsuit alleging NYPD Officer George Mastrokostas repeatedly raped her for several years after falsely arresting her when she was 14, public records show.
“She had a very tragic thing happen, very early on, where she was falsely arrested by that police officer and then he just used that to groom her and then rape her,” her lawyer, Andrew Laufer, told The News on Sunday. “The city did the right thing and settled the case with her.”
He’s also representing her in a pending action against Coney Island Hospital, which she alleges committed her against her will for more than 72 hours.
Laufer was stunned by news of the crash. “What I will say is that she’s had a real tragic life. I know that’s not gonna be any kind of solace to what happened here,” he said. “That’s just incredible. I’m just taken aback. I can’t believe that happened.”
She posted about the NYPD lawsuit in several TikTok videos, including one from October where she states, “South Brooklyn NYPD has always been corrupt… They want to shut me up because they sexually abused me.”
In another video, from just earlier this month, she alludes to buying a custom-built Porsche with her settlement money. Her TikTok account has racked up over one million likes.
Yarimi’s neighbors described her as kind and friendly but emotionally unstable. Police had been to her apartment several times and last week she posted on social media about finding a hidden camera, neighbors recounted.
“I was scared because she was not OK,” said neighbor Angie Strutska. “She found some hidden cameras in her vent — but it’s just a screw, because we have the same vent …The last time when the cops were here they took her to the hospital. She was gone for like two weeks.”
She was embroiled in a custody battle for her young daughter with her ex-boyfriend, neighbors said.
“I know she’s a very good mom. She really is a good mom. Everything is for the baby. She’s not a bad person but I think she was definitely off her medications,” said one neighbor, Karina. “When she’s on her meds she is amazing. She’s very family oriented.”
The neighbor described Yarimi’s social media presence as an act of bravado.
“She pretended to have this luxury life where she thought she’s invincible. She would post videos where she would say like, ‘Oh, you can’t touch me. I’m invincible. God is on my side. Nothing is gonna happen to me ever,'” Karina said.
“I’m so sorry… she needs to get in trouble. This is not okay, because this is a family. She ruined a family. And a father is with no wife, he lost two kids. Two kids are without a mother. She needs to pay.”
“I will call it like it is,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters Saturday. “This was a horrific tragedy caused by someone who shouldn’t have been on the road.”
The 62-year-old driver of the Toyota Camry and his four passengers, a woman and three kids, were taken to Kings County Hospital and treated for minor injuries.
