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Driver Who Killed Mother and Daughters Sentenced to 3 to 9 Years

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Driver Who Killed Mother and Daughters Sentenced to 3 to 9 Years

A driver who crashed into a woman and her two young daughters while they were crossing a street in Brooklyn in March, killing all three, was sentenced to as many as nine years in prison on Wednesday.

The driver, Miriam Yarimi, has admitted striking the woman, Natasha Saada, 34, and her daughters, Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5, after speeding through a red light. She had slammed into another vehicle on the border of the Gravesend and Midwood neighborhoods and careened into a crosswalk where the family was walking.

Ms. Yarimi, 33, accepted a judge’s offer last month to admit to three counts of second-degree manslaughter in Brooklyn Supreme Court in return for a lighter sentence. She was sentenced on Wednesday by the judge, Justice Danny Chun, to three to nine years behind bars.

The case against Ms. Yarimi, a wig maker with a robust social media presence, became a flashpoint among transportation activists. Ms. Yarimi, who drove a blue Audi A3 sedan with the license plate WIGM8KER, had a long history of driving infractions, according to New York City records, with more than $12,000 in traffic violation fines tied to her vehicle at the time of the crash.

The deaths of Ms. Saada and her daughters set off a wave of outrage in the city over unchecked reckless driving and prompted calls from transportation groups for lawmakers to pass penalties on so-called super speeders.

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Ms. Yarimi “cared about only herself when she raced in the streets of Brooklyn and wiped away nearly an entire family,” Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, said in a statement after the sentencing. “She should not have been driving a car that day.”

Mr. Gonzalez had recommended the maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison.

On Wednesday, Ms. Yarimi appeared inside the Brooklyn courtroom wearing a gray shirt and leggings, with her hands handcuffed behind her back. During the brief proceedings, she addressed the court, reading from a piece of paper.

“I’ll have to deal with this for the rest of my life and I think that’s a punishment in itself,” she said, her eyes full of tears. “I think about the victims every day. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about what I’ve done.”

On the afternoon of March 29, a Saturday, Ms. Yarimi was driving with a suspended license, according to prosecutors. Around 1 p.m., she turned onto Ocean Parkway, where surveillance video shows her using her cellphone and running a red light, before continuing north, they said.

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At the intersection with Quentin Road, Ms. Saada was stepping into the crosswalk with her two daughters and 4-year-old son. Nearby, a Toyota Camry was waiting to turn onto the parkway.

Ms. Yarimi sped through a red light and into the intersection. She barreled into the back of the Toyota and then shot forward, plowing into the Saada family. Her car flipped over and came to a rest about 130 feet from the carnage.

Ms. Saada and her daughters were killed, while her son was taken to a hospital where he had a kidney removed and was treated for skull fractures and brain bleeding. The Toyota’s five passengers — an Uber driver, a mother and her three children — also suffered minor injuries.

Ms. Yarimi’s car had been traveling 68 miles per hour in a 25 m.p.h. zone and showed no sign that brakes had been applied, prosecutors said. Ms. Yarimi sustained minor injures from the crash and was later taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

The episode caused immediate fury, drawing reactions from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams, who attended the Saadas’s funeral.

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According to NYCServ, the city’s database for unpaid tickets, Ms. Yarimi’s Audi had $1,345 in unpaid fines at the time of the crash. On another website that tracks traffic violations using city data, the car received 107 parking and camera violations between June 2023 and the end of March 2025. Those violations, which included running red lights and speeding through school zones, amounted to more than $12,000 in fines.

In the months that followed, transportation safety groups and activists decried Ms. Yarimi’s traffic record and urged lawmakers in Albany to pass legislation to address the city’s chronic speeders.

Mr. Gonzalez on Wednesday said that Ms. Yarimi’s sentence showed “that reckless driving will be vigorously prosecuted.”

But outside the courthouse, the Saada family’s civil lawyer, Herschel Kulefsky, complained that the family had not been allowed to speak in court. “ They are quite disappointed, or outraged would probably be a better word,” he said, calling the sentence “the bare minimum.”

“I think this doesn’t send any message at all, other than a lenient message,” Mr. Kulefsky added.

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Video: We Analyzed the Deadly Crash at LaGuardia

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Video: We Analyzed the Deadly Crash at LaGuardia

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Our graphics reporter Lazaro Gamio breaks down the second-by-second analysis leading up to the deadly plane crash at LaGuardia Airport.

By Lazaro Gamio, Coleman Lowndes and James Surdam

March 27, 2026

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Video: LaGuardia Crash Survivors Recount Ordeal

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Video: LaGuardia Crash Survivors Recount Ordeal

“I just thought, please don’t let this be how my life ends. I’m not ready to die. When we landed, it was a very rough landing. Like we landed and the plane jolted back up, and that caught a lot of passengers off guard. Everyone kind of like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then you hear the pilot braking, and it was like just this grinding sound.” “Everybody was shocked everywhere. There was — there’s people screaming. The plane just veered off course. I mean, it was just — it all happened so quickly, but it all felt just like a very dire situation.” “Oh, God. Oh my goodness. That’s crazy.” “People were bleeding from their nose, cuts and scrapes. I saw black eyes, all different types of facial contusions, bruising and bleeding. I was sitting by the exit door, and I opened the exit door. There was a sense of camaraderie amongst the survivors. Nobody was pushing, shoving, ‘I got to get out first.’” “The plane actually tipped back as we were leaving, as people were getting off the plane. That was when the nose kind of fell off the front of the plane, and the whole plane kind of went up to what we’d seen in all the pictures of the plane’s nose in the air.” And there was no slide when we got out. A lot of us were jumping off of the airplane wing to get down. And when I got out and I saw that the front of the plane, how destroyed it was, I just was — I was in shock.” “It was only really when I was outside of the plane, looking back at the plane, and I had seen what had happened to the cockpit, and then just like this sense of dread overcame me, where I was just like, wow, a lot of people might have just been pretty badly hurt.” “I’m grateful to the pilots who were so courageous and brave, and acted swiftly, and they saved our lives. And if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to come home to my family. I’m forever indebted to them. They’re my heroes.”

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Video: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead

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Video: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead

new video loaded: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead

The two pilots of a Air Canada Express jet were killed after a collision with a Port Authority fire truck on Sunday at LaGuardia Airport in New York.

By Axel Boada and Monika Cvorak

March 23, 2026

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