‘N.Y. has taken her life’
Retired cop mourns daughter’s death in Bx. car crash
Proud mom Alma Rosa had been looking forward to her 27-year-old daughter Keara flying to Florida to celebrate the retired 21-year NYPD veteran’s 60th birthday Aug. 30.
Instead, Rosa is now planning her Keara’s funeral — mourning a loss so deep she hasn’t begun to fathom the freak auto accident that took the life of her only daughter.
Keara was driving on the Cross Bronx Expressway just after midnight Wednesday when her newly purchased car broke down on the side of the road. She exited to call for help — but a tractor trailer slammed into the disabled vehicle and pinned her between the car and the overpass, killing her immediately, police said.
“As a parent, you’re supposed to leave before your children,” Rosa told the Daily News on Sunday. “She was pinned, so I don’t know how much damage my daughter has. I don’t want to remember her like that. I’ll probably do a memorial with the most beautiful picture I have of her, and we’ll do a cremation.”
Rosa said she and Keara had kept planning, and then postponing, Keara’s trip to Florida due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“She said ‘Mom, I’m gonna be there for a month with you, we’re going to go to the beach,’ ” said Rosa. “And this is my birthday gift, I have to bury my daughter.”
Rosa raised Keara and her three brothers on the Upper West Side until 2004, when she moved the family down to Florida after she retired from the police department. The mother of four worked at Ground Zero after 9/11 and is a cancer survivor.
Keara always wanted to return to New York — and moved to Brooklyn in 2017 before finding a place in Newark, N.J.
“She always loved New
York, it was in her blood,” Rosa said of her daughter. “And now New York has taken her life.”
Keara bought the silver coupe that broke down on the expressway just two weeks before her death. Alma said it was her daughter’s first-ever car, and she intended to use it to travel back to Orlando, Fla. to visit family.
In a heartbreaking final Instagram post two weeks beproudly fore she died, Keara posted a picture of the newly acquired used car. “Hard work pays off,” she wrote in all capital letters, followed by a red heart emoji. “Thank you god.”
Rosa said the car had been a huge source of pride for her daughter, despite the mother’s warnings to get it checked out by a mechanic.
“I remember asking her, you gotta take take that car to the shop,” Rosa said. “And she had, and she said ‘yeah, when I get some more money together I’ll take it back to the shop.’ ”
The grieving mother said she doesn’t know much about the crash. Keara’s friend who was in the passenger’s seat during the crash walked away uninjured, and Rosa has had limited conversation with the survivor.
“She witnessed this, so she’s traumatized, it’s just giving her time to grieve,” said Rosa. “From the little I understand, she picked up this girl and I think they were heading to Jersey.”
Keara was a regular presence at her grandparents’ Upper West Side apartment, and Rosa said her daughter helped them out whenever she could. She was working as a pharmaceutical technician and was trying to get certified in the field, her mother said.
Keara leaves behind an 8year-old daughter in Florida, Rosa said.