Hit-Run Driver Kills 2 Women on Valley Street

A hit-and-run driver in a pickup truck killed a Van Nuys woman and her sister-in-law, a visitor from China, as they were walking home from church, the Los Angeles Police Department reported.

Yoo Won Jo, 63, and her sister-in-law, Yoo Oak Soon, 65, were crossing Sherman Way east of Kester Avenue at about 11:15 p.m. Thursday when they were hit, Officer Mike Ewing said. They were not in a crosswalk, he said.

The women had attended a conference and evening services at the First Baptist Church of Van Nuys and were returning to Yoo Won Jo’s apartment in a retirement home across the street, Ewing said.

Church officials said Yoo had lived at that address with her husband, Jong, 67, for two years.

“Several congregation members were talking in front of the church when we heard a loud crash,” the Rev. Yoon Chong Dae, pastor of the church’s Korean mission, said through an interpreter. “At first we thought it was a two-car collision. Suddenly, a light-colored pickup truck sped away and we realized that two of our church members had been hit.”