The 3-year-old boy killed by a hit-and-run driver in Baltimore County Friday evening shared a special bond with his grandmother and was a favorite for running errands with her, his father said.
Elijah Cozart was likely doing just that when a pickup slammed into his grandmother, who was pushing him in a stroller at a busy Goucher Boulevard intersection, trapping the boy in the car?s undercarriage. The truck dragged Elijah for almost a mile.
He was pronounced dead at Good Samaritan Hospital.
“He was a special boy ? everyone loved him, everyone who met him,” the boy?s father, Kevin Cozart, said from his Baltimore home. “He loved his sister, Kylie, he protected her and made sure she was OK. And his grandmother always, always was there for the kids.”
Cozart said Elijah?s maternal grandmother, Marjorie Thomas, often took him shopping at nearby stores and to a Western Union, but can?t say for sure what they were doing earlier Friday. From her room at University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, Thomas said Monday that she still can?t remember the incident, which left her with serious injuries to her legs, wrists and head.
Police also are trying to piece together events. They say Lazara Arellano de Hogue, 40, hit Thomas and Elijah, then continued driving southbound, ramming a concrete median. She turned right on Loch Raven Boulevard and right again on Regester Avenue, where she stopped short of hitting a utility pole, police said.
She got out, removed the stroller, then continued driving west to her residence on Castle Road, witnesses told police. Elijah was found in a Regester Road yard, his twisted blue stroller nearby.
Charged with failing to stop at a crash, failing to provide reasonable assistance and failing to provide information, Arellano de Hogue is being held on $250,000 bond ? lowered from $2 million by a Baltimore County judge Monday morning. Judge Philip Tirabassi also ordered her to forfeit her Mexican passport and placed her on home detention should she make bail, said assistant state?s attorney Allan Webster.
Webster said he is awaiting crash reconstruction and autopsy reports before considering vehicular manslaughter charges.
Kevin Cozart said his family is making funeral arrangements and receiving family from New York and Virginia.
“We?re doing as best as we can in a situation like this,” he said. “All of our family isbeing supportive. We have a lot of comfort.”
