Police To Pass Hit-Run Crash Evidence To DA

Bristol Township police investigators will be forwarding evidence against a Bristol Borough man they suspect struck the home of a 93-year-old Levittown woman on hospice with his pickup truck and fled onto the Bucks County District Attorney this week.

The suspect, whose name hasn’t been released, turned himself in to police Friday afternoon after Bristol Borough police Sgt. Pete Faight found the damaged red Dodge Ram pickup truck parked in the 500 block of Bath Street.

Police said the suspect was at first worried when he saw television news crews outside and later turned himself in at a nearby gas station. The man was questioned by detectives and released, Acting Bristol Township Chief of Police Sgt. Ralph Johnson said.

An autopsy on 58-pound Jennie Russo, a longtime resident of 67 Red Brook Lane in Levittown, showed the 93 year old died from “in-stage lung disease, pulmonary fibrosis,” police said. Russo suffered from the lung disease for years and was in the final stages of her life.

“There was no evidence of trauma caused by the accident,” Johnson said.

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office is expected to review the case next week and determine if charges are warranted.

Jennie Russo’s son, Ron Russo said he was sleeping  in a room near his mother’s bedroom, where she was on hospice, when he heard a crash around 2:40 a.m. He rushed into her room to see a dresser leaning against his mother’s hospice bed. He tended to her, scooped her up and moved Jennie Russo into another bedroom.

Ron Russo, said he believes moving his frail mother two times after the pickup smashed into the wall of her bedroom led to her death at 4:55 a.m. Friday.

Jennie Russo’s family said her final wish was to die in her bedroom, surrounded by her religious statues. Due to the crash, she was unable to return to her bedroom.

Friday was Jennie Russo’s 93rd birthday. Her son remembered her as an active woman who was religious and worked hard to raise her family inside the Levittown home she shared with her husband, who passed away in the 1960s.

Update: Truck is parked on Bath Street. Truck was spotted Bristol Borough Sgt. Pete Faight. @fox29philly pic.twitter.com/HKFrbmLikt

— laurendawn (@LaurenDawnFox29) December 26, 2014