Hit-and-run driver hunted after woman killed and two men hurt in crashes

Police have named a driver they want to speak to about two car crashes in which one woman was killed and two men were injured.
By The Newsroom
Published 29th Dec 2012, 06:00 BST

Officers appealed for help tracing Nathan Davis, 27, over the collisions which occurred in south London in the early hours of Saturday, December 22.

At around 5.20am, Mr Davis’s Audi A3 stopped at the scene of a crash in London Road at the junction with Ederline Avenue, Croydon, where a male driver’s Volkswagen Passat hit a tree.

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Scotland Yard said Mr Davis got out of his car but fled when plainclothes police officers, who were on duty nearby, identified themselves.

Officers stayed with the injured 29-year-old Passat driver, who was taken to hospital and remains in a stable condition.

Ten minutes later the same Audi collided with a man and woman standing at a bus stop on Streatham High Road.

The woman, Veronica Vanessa Chango-Alvarez, 31, was pronounced dead at the scene and the 51-year-old man is in a critical condition in hospital.

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The Metropolitan Police said the driver fled on foot before officers arrived, leaving the damaged Audi at the scene.

Miss Chango-Alvarez was killed outside her mother’s home where she was staying for Christmas.

Her brother Kevin Raul Chango-Alvarez paid tribute to her, saying: “My family has had its heart 
torn out, at this Christmas 
time, we will never be the same again.

“On Friday night we were together as a family with Veronica meeting her newly-born nephew and preparing for Christmas.

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“I last saw her alive as she left to go to work on Saturday morning, but moments later I was holding her hand as she passed away in the street.

“We, as a family, are devastated at our loss.

“The driver did not stay around to help my sister. My family and I appeal to anyone who knows him or who has any information as to his whereabouts to come forward and contact police.”

A post-mortem examination gave the victim’s cause of death as multiple injuries.

Detective Inspector Gordon Wallace of the Metropolitan Police said: “This was a horrific collision where a young woman was killed outside the family home as she waited for a bus on her way to work.

“The family are devastated. 
The memory of this senseless death will be with them each time they leave their home.”