PANORAMA CITY : Reward Offered in Hit-and-Run Death

The Los Angeles City Council is offering $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of a hit-and-run driver who on Sunday struck and killed a 7-year-old boy as he ran across a Panorama City street to an ice cream truck.

Police said a black 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit hit Skyy Nelson about 10:25 a.m. as the child ran into the street from between parked cars in the 9000 block of Tobias Avenue.

The boy was yanked from his shoes by the impact of the collision and thrown about 25 feet from where he was hit, witnesses said. He was pronounced dead at 4:15 p.m. Sunday at Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills.

“There has been a rash of tragic car accidents in my district,” said the measure’s sponsor, Councilman Richard Alarcon. “The sooner we get public assistance, the sooner the suspect can be apprehended.”

Skyy was the third death by a hit-and-run driver in the east San Fernando Valley in five days.

Witnesses described the driver of the car as a mustachioed Latino man about 25 years old. They also said the man did not stop in spite of the loud thud of the car hitting the child, and drove north on Tobias at about 40 m.p.h., turning right onto Nordhoff and disappearing.

Last Wednesday, 12-year-old Amalia Godoy and her mother Maria, 48, were killed as they crossed a Pacoima intersection where neighbors had urged city officials for more than two years to install a traffic signal. Godoy’s son, Marco, 13, stopped to tie his shoe and was not injured.

Fernando Bengoechea, 23, of Arleta--allegedly that car’s driver--turned himself in to police about four hours after the crash.