Family searches for answers after deadly hit and run

EL MIRAGE, AZ - An El Mirage family is hoping someone may have seen the driver in the car that hit their loved one last Friday night.

Blanca Carbajal, affectionately called Joanna by her family, was in the crosswalk on West Thunderbird near Grand Avenue.

"Her smile, her laugh," is how Diana Carbajal, her sister, remembered the 37-year-old.

Diana is one of Joanna's five siblings.

The caregiver was raising six children, with ages ranging between five and 18.

"Just is a good mom all around," said her oldest son, Samuel Ernest Murillo.

"We just have to stay strong and move on," he said. "There is nothing that we can do. It's the worst thing that could happen to our family."

"To think that it happened to her I'm beside myself," Diana said. "I'm at a loss of words."

The family is pleading with the driver with the hopes they will turn themselves in to El Mirage Police.

"How can you keep going?" Diana said. "How can you live that you took somebody's life, that you took a mother away from her six children and be so inhumane and leave her laying in the street."

"We don't believe it was intentional but the way my sister was left is simply unacceptable," said her brother, Keith Carbajal.

Police are looking for a white, newer model Eclipse with front-end damage and a broken windshield.

Anyone with information related to this case is urged to call the El Mirage Police Department.