The two 17-year-old girls were riding their e-bikes down a quiet street in a small town on Monday, in the slanting light of a summery fall evening. The girls, Maria Niotis and Isabella Salas, close friends, were with Maria’s family, and they were going to get ice cream.
From down the block, a car came shooting up the street, said Maria’s uncle Emmanuel Niotis. “Next thing you know, there were bodies flying up in the air,” he said.
One twisted bicycle was embedded in the crushed front end of the Jeep S.U.V. The driver fled briefly, prosecutors said. Both girls were pronounced dead at the hospital.
And as word of the driver’s name seeped out, for the girls’ families and friends in Cranford, N.J., heartbreak turned to fury.
The driver, they said, was Vincent Battiloro, also 17, who had been fixated on Maria for months, at least. Maria’s mother told a friend she had called the police multiple times because he had parked outside the family’s house and would not leave. Two friends of Maria’s said he had harassed her. Online, where Vincent has tens of thousands of followers as a video game streamer, he had taunted Maria and her mother a week before the crash, ordering pizzas to their house as a prank.
Prosecutors have not released the driver’s name because of his age, describing him only as a 17-year-old from neighboring Garwood. But a state court database shows that a motorist named Vincent Battiloro received 14 traffic summonses for a crash in Cranford on Monday. One person familiar with the investigation into the fatal crash confirmed that the summonses had been issued in connection with that crash. Another confirmed that the driver was named Vincent Battiloro. Both spoke anonymously to discuss a continuing investigation.
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