Columnist Susan Snyder: Still no answers in D’Amato case

Friday, April 6, 2001 | 4:50 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column also appears Tuesdays and Fridays in the Las Vegas Sun. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

It has been almost two years since Theresa D'Amato was killed.

No one has been arrested -- Metro Police have stopped looking because of a lack of leads. And her family is fed up with the waiting.

"Somebody is dead here. You're going to expect people to sit back and take it lightly?" said Joseph Martino, D'Amato's former boyfriend who is raising the 7-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son she left behind.

The 28-year-old woman was struck by a pickup on June 4, 1999, as she and a friend walked along Nellis Avenue to a neighborhood bar. The truck careened onto the sidewalk and hit them when it was struck by a BMW sedan, which had spun out of control on rain-slicked pavement.

The BMW struck a pole and burst into flames, a Metro Police report says. The pickup driver got out to survey the damage. But the BMW driver ran.

D'Amato died at University Medical Center four hours later.

Officers have never identified the driver who caused the accident and then ran off. And unless someone steps forward with some new information, they never will, Metro Police Lt. Joe Greenwood said.

"If we had the ability to prosecute somebody, we would. That's our job," Greenwood said. "But when you don't have anybody in mind, you haven't got a case.

"It's a tragic thing that nobody can get nailed for something like this."

D'Amato's parents, Frank and Roseanne Haydu, think so, too. They also think the police gave up too easily.

"She wasn't the mayor's daughter. She wasn't some big shot," Frank Haydu said. "Nobody gives a damn."

Haydu, 69, has cancer and spends his days on an oxygen machine inside the couple's North Las Vegas home. He has a lot of time to think. His copies of the police report and witness statements are dog-eared from reading and re-reading. He can point out every fact, facet and inconsistency.

He suspects the owner of the BMW lied about the car being stolen and was actually driving it that night. Greenwood says it's not possible. The owner of the car weighs 100 pounds more and is six inches taller than the suspect described by witnesses at the scene.

But police checked him out -- just in case -- because the car wasn't reported stolen until officers arrived on the doorstep and said it had been used in a hit-and-run, the lieutenant said.

"It wasn't the owner of the vehicle. That's all there is to it," Greenwood said. "Case closed."

But there is no closure for those left in the wake of a hit-and-run. There is no justice.

"There are only three of us here, and the only satisfaction we're going to get out of this is that guy getting caught," Haydu said.

His wife turned from the table and took a gold urn from the shelf behind her. A small photograph of D'Amato is taped to the outside. It holds half her ashes. The other half are in a second urn that sits in Martino's home.

"She's right here sitting in the room with us," Roseanne Haydu said. "But it's been almost two years. She's not going to rest in peace until this guy is brought in."

She rubbed the sides of the urn with a dust cloth.

"She was a pretty little girl. It shouldn't have happened to her," the mother said. "It hurts. It really hurts."