Hit-run vic’s mom rages at heartless driver

THE MOTHER of a Washington Heights woman critically injured in a hit-and-run crash prayed Saturday for her daughter’s recovery — and the driver’s arrest.

Renee Edwards, 42, was found lying unresponsive in the crosswalk after the driver ran a red light at W. 157th St. and St. Nicholas Ave. Friday night, cops said.

“Turn yourself in,” the victim’s mom, Beverly Bennett, urged the fugitive driver. “How could you live with yourself? To hit somebody and run off?”

Police released a video of the car that plowed into Edwards Saturday, hoping that someone will recognize the Chrysler 300M luxury sedan. Witnesses said the driver never even stopped to see how badly the woman was hurt as she walked her dog through the neighborhood.

“I pray she pulls through and she makes it and everything works out all right, the way it should be,” said the 69-year-old Bennett.

Edwards, who was in the intensive care unit at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s hospital Saturday, was awaiting a procedure to determine her prognosis. She apparently suffered an aneurysm, her family said.

Anyone with information about the motorist is urged to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.

Edwards’ son Taqwa Phillips, 16, said he heard the sirens in the neighborhood Friday but didn’t know his mother was the victim.

“Next thing I know, a friend of ours comes up crying to me and tells me, ‘Your mother got hit,’” he recounted. “Immediately my heart dropped. I saw my grandmother speaking with police ... and my world shattered.”

Edwards is also the mother of a 20-year-old daughter, who was at the hospital Saturday keeping an eye on her mother.

Bennett said she’s already buried two sons — one the victim of an unsolved homicide, the other a suicide — and her husband died just last year.

“I’m going through some times here,” she said.