Girl Is Critical in Hit, Run

Alina Zapata told her mother she was going to the movies with friends Sunday night and arranged to meet her in front of a Buena Park pharmacy when the show ended.

When her mother, Carla, arrived to pick her up near Knott’s Berry Farm, there had been an accident. Roads were blocked, and the area was swarming with police.

“I saw a tennis shoe in the middle of the street,” said Carla Zapata, 40, of Buena Park. She said she had no idea it was her daughter’s.

Zapata found traffic was thick and had trouble pulling into the parking lot near the drugstore. After waiting more than 10 minutes, she drove home, thinking there had been a mix-up and that her 13-year-old daughter would call.

Instead, the call came from one of Alina’s friends: Alina had been hit by a driver who then sped away.

On Monday, the Orangeview Junior High School eighth-grader remained in critical condition at UCI Medical Center in Orange.

She was being treated for head injuries, punctured lungs and traumatic injuries to one leg. Alina is not expected to live, her mother said.

Buena Park police said they were searching for the driver of a light-colored truck that struck the girl as she walked in a crosswalk at 9:14 p.m. Sunday.

The girl was straggling behind her friends when she was struck by the vehicle and tossed nearly 50 feet, Officer Larry Ungles said.

Even though the girl was in a crosswalk, it has not been determined who was at fault, police said.

So far, police have few clues to solve the case.

Investigators have reviewed videotapes from nearby Knott’s Berry Farm, but the tapes captured only grainy images of Alina’s friends running back to help her, Ungles said.

Alina and her friends had just left a movie at Buena Park Mall and were walking north on Beach Boulevard.

Investigators found broken plastic from a turn signal and a windshield wiper blade in the intersection.

“We have very little to work with,” Ungles said. “We hope someone saw something that will help us.”

“We need to find the driver,” the girl’s mother said. “Someone had to see something.”

The vehicle sought was described as a white or yellow truck, possibly a GMC, with damage to the left front corner.

Anyone with information is urged to call Buena Park police at (714) 562-3941.