SAD LAST CALL
Daughter mourns ma killed by hit-run driver
ALTHEA GILLINGS would give anything to hear the joke her mother Dorothy Parker promised to tell her a few hours before a hit-and-run driver took Parker’s life.
“She said, ‘I can’t tell you right now, I’m at work, but as soon as I get home I’ll tell you,’ ” Gillings, 45, said, recalling the Sunday morning phone call with her mother.
“She never got a chance to tell me,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.
Roughly 12 hours after that conversation, Parker, 64, was on her way home from work when a silver four-door Honda Accord barreled into her as she crossed Remsen Ave. near Church Ave. in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, around 9:50 p.m., cops said.
She was just eight blocks from home when she was hit.
The deeply religious home health aide died of a massive head injury at Brookdale University Hospital the next day, police said.
The motorist who struck Parker never stopped, witnesses told police.
On Friday, the NYPD released surveillance images of the Honda, in the hopes someone recognizes the vehicle, which has extensive damage to its passengerside fender and front bumper.
As cops continue to search for the driver, Gillings has begun the painful process of going through her mother’s belongings.
“She always sits right there on the couch,” she said, pointing to the end seat of a sectional in the grandmother of five’s East Flatbush apartment. “I told her everything. There’s nothing I didn’t share with her. I don’t know who I’m going to tell those things to now.”
Parker raised Gillings and her brother by herself after their father died at the age of 23, from a concussion he suffered while playing soccer.
Aside from doting on her children Parker was a “church prayer warrior” who would preach the word in the city’s subway system, her daughter said.
She also worked on Sundays to help her son in Jamaica pay some medical bills.
Parker was an active congregant at Brooklyn Faith Seventh-day Adventist Church, where her funeral will be held next Saturday.
Gillings believes her mother was praying when the motorist slammed into her.
“That’s how she is,” she said. “She was a Christian woman. She was very soft-hearted. She wouldn’t have any ill-will toward this person.”
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.