A 41-year-old woman has been arrested in connection with the hit-and-run death of an Indian student in Connecticut last year.
Jill Augelli was arrested on November 18 in the October 2023 death of Priyanshu Aggarwal, 23, an international student at the University of New Haven.
According to a report in the Hartford Courant, he has been accused of shirking responsibility, resulting in death.
Agwal had just a few months left to complete his graduation and was applying for jobs when the hit-and-run incident took his life, reports said.
The New Haven Police Department announced the arrest of the driver allegedly involved in the incident during a news conference on Monday.
At the press conference, Aggarwal’s brother, Aman, told how he misses her every day for the past one year since the accident.
“I just want to say that I miss my brother every day,” he said. The report quoted him as saying that he still had dreams about his brother. He said he is vacillating between having good memories of his sibling and feeling guilty.
Aman told that the driver did not stop after the collision. “I feel like he didn’t try to stop and that caused him major injuries,” he said.
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker was quoted as saying by the Courant that Priyanshu Aggarwal’s family described him as a man with a “big smile” who had many friends because of his “generous, charismatic personality.”
Elicker said “a lot of people loved him” and “he had his whole life ahead of him”, adding that at the time of his death he was applying for jobs and had plans to make a living in the United States. Had “big dreams”.
“Thanks to Priyanshu Aggarwal and his family for deciding to donate his heart,” Elicker said, “he was able to save someone else’s life.”
“And so that heart is now beating in someone else’s body,” Elicker said. “So even though he lost his life, a part of his life today is giving life to someone else and we’re grateful for that too.” New Haven Police Chief Carl Jacobson said at the time that officers did not have enough evidence to charge Augelli and “had to work to place him behind the driver’s seat during the crash”.
Police said this included obtaining GPS data from her cell phone carrier, which allegedly showed she was “in the vicinity” when the collision occurred, the Courant reports. Forensic testing also reportedly revealed that Aggarwal’s DNA was in Augelli’s car.
According to police, Agwal was driving an electric scooter around 11 pm on October 18, 2023, when he entered an intersection and was hit by a motorist. The driver did not stop and continued moving forward, the report said.
Agwal was taken to Yale New Haven Hospital where he was pronounced dead about a week later.
Investigators found the car involved in the crash in Naugatuck the next day. According to police, investigators determined that Augelli was the registered owner of the vehicle, the report said.
Augelli is being held on $100,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in New Haven Superior Court on Tuesday.
Priyanshu Aggarwal, 23, was pursuing a master’s degree in business analytics after coming to the US in 2022 from Deoli, Rajasthan, according to the University of New Haven. He worked as a business analyst intern in an IT company.
Elicker said he hopes Priyanshu Aggarwal’s story can help highlight the importance of safe driving and the critical need to stop and help when an accident occurs. “If you run away, we will track you down and hold you accountable,” Elicker said in the report.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
