Dad of El Paso teacher says hit-and-run death preventable | Amanda "Mandy" Weyant-Ferguson

https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/ne...ti/2131037002/

Summary:
November 28, 2018

An El Paso father made a heart-wrenching plea for safety improvements to an intersection where his daughter was killed in a Thanksgiving Day hit-and-run.

Amanda "Mandy" Weyant-Ferguson was the latest victim in a string of pedestrian deaths in the Cincinnati Avenue Entertainment District going back more than a decade.

Weyant-Ferguson, 29, was on a North Mesa Street crosswalk at 1:45 a.m. when she was struck by a car that ran a red light by Cincinnati Avenue.

“I pray to God that you never have to feel that your heart is being pulled out of your chest (by) something like this, that should have been prevented years ago," Amanda's father, Dan Ferguson, said at a Tuesday night community meeting hosted by West Side city Rep. Peter Svarzbein.

“Here’s my short term goal: I’m burying my daughter tomorrow (Wednesday) at three o’clock," Dan Ferguson, a retired educator, added. "Here’s my long term goal: I pray that I can live day by day until I can find the time that I can die and meet my daughter in heaven.”

Weyant-Ferguson was a sixth-grade teacher at Eastwood Heights Elementary School.

The alleged hit-and-run driver, Joel Josue Velazquez, 24, was later arrested by El Paso police. He remains jailed under a $150,000 bond.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed an immigration hold on Velazquez, who was born in Juárez and is suspected of being an undocumented immigrant, an ICE official said Wednesday.