Family seeks answers in fatal hit-and-run

LYNN – Nearly five years ago, 22-year-old Michael Zarba stepped into a crosswalk at Boston and Cedar streets and was hit by a car that then fled the scene.Zarba died 12 days later. The driver of the car was never found. And the family still hopes for answers.”I’d just like to see the person who did it be responsible,” Philip Zarba, Michael’s father, said earlier this month. “I could see them driving away because they panicked, but then turning themselves in the next day. But by now, they think they got away with it.”Michael S. Zarba, 22, left his Grove Street home at 6:30 a.m. on May 8, 2009 and walked toward Boston and Mall streets to catch the bus to work at Home Depot in Salem.At the corner of Boston and Cedar, Zarba stepped into the crosswalk and took about 2.4 seconds to make it 33.4 feet across the approximately 41-foot-wide Boston Street, according to a Massachusetts State Police report filed by Trooper Brian Roderick. A light-colored sedan traveling east on Boston Street hit Zarba, police said. Surveillance footage from the Lucky 7 Market showed Zarba slide across the sedan’s hood and off the passenger side of the car, landing 37 feet from the point of impact, police reported.Zarba was taken to Union Hospital and transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital. He never regained consciousness and died May 20, 2009, his family said.A witness at the scene said Zarba “darted out” into traffic and was hit by a brown Toyota or Honda driven by an Hispanic man.(The family said that other witnesses reported more than one person in the car that struck Zarba.)Police concluded the car that hit Zarba was traveling at approximately 25 miles per hour prior to the crash and that a motorist traveling in that direction at that time “would experience a moderate level of solar glare?” But the car was approximately 84 feet from impact when Zarba entered the crosswalk and should have been noticed by the driver, police said.”This collision and the resultant demise of Mr. Michael S. Zarba would not have occurred had the operator of (the vehicle) been reasonably attentive and exercised reasonable care and caution,” state police said.Police have not found the car or the driver.Meanwhile, the incident was the first of several tragedies that year for the Zarba family.Michael’s cousin Melissa Duvall, 27, died of a heart attack on Nov. 4, 2009. A month later, Michael’s brother Louis Zarba died of a heart attack while recovering from the flu, the family said. They are all buried together in Pine Grove Cemetery.”The other things that have happened makes it much more important to find the person responsible for Michael,” Philip Zarba said. “They were all best friends, it was like God wanted them to be together or something.”So, the family is renewing their plea for information.”Somebody knows besides the driver,” Philip Zarba said. “Maybe the person in the car with (the driver) or wife or family member or the mechanic where he took the car.”Michael’s sister Krystina Tejeda said the family was hopeful after somebody left a Toyota emblem on Michael’s grave. But she said they couldn’t connect the emblem to any specific vehicle. Philip Zarba contacted The Daily Item in the hope that an article would bring renewed attention to the case.Meanwhile family members this month recounted how Michael used to walk around Lynn in a gorilla costume, loved wrestling and ate frozen pizza for virtually every meal.”It’s not fair that this person gets to go on with their lives and not be held responsible for the pain that they have caused,” Tejeda said.If you have any information about the Zarba case, please contact Lynn Police at 781-595-2000.