The person killed by a fleeing driver at 73rd and Garfield avenues last Saturday was not, as the first witness accounts held, a woman in her 40s. Her relatives have now identified her as Maribel Matias, 24, a mother of a 7-year-old girl.

When The Dissent and other outlets first reported the August 8 death in East Oakland, the victim was an unnamed woman thought to be in her 40s — the only description witnesses could offer, her identity withheld until relatives were notified. Five days later her family put a name and a much younger age to the loss, and added details that sharpen both the grief and the open questions: security footage they say captured two cars bearing down on her, and a driver still not found nearly a week on.

Maribel Matias was 24, and she was raising a 7-year-old daughter. Her relatives came forward with her name on Thursday in an interview with KTVU, replacing a public record that had guessed her age at roughly double what it turned out to be.

That gap says something. For days, the most anyone could tell reporters was that a woman believed to be in her 40s had been struck at the intersection, her name held back until next of kin were reached — the framing SFist carried in its August 10 write-up. The Dissent repeated that same early estimate. It was mistaken — not out of anyone's bad faith, but because that was the sum of what the public knew about a young mother who died in the road: next to nothing, and even that off by two decades.

The core facts hold up. A vehicle heading north on 73rd Avenue hit Matias near the corner of Garfield around 11:45 p.m. on Saturday, then kept going, KRON4 reported (external source, opens in a new tab). Paramedics tried to save her; she was declared dead where she fell. She was standing beside Mt. Tabor Baptist Church when it happened — and, pointedly, across the street from the Police Department's Eastmont Substation, the same building that houses the city's Traffic Division.

What is new is what the family has chosen to share. Relatives told KTVU the collision came after a party, one at which Matias had been drinking and had quarreled with her boyfriend. They said surveillance video reviewed by the station shows two cars closing in as she stood in the roadway, one of them hitting her and pulling away. Those are hard details, offered by the people closest to her, and they do not soften the fact at the center of the case: a driver struck a person and left.

Marcel Robinson, the pastor at the church, told the station he was praying for her family and friends and hoping whoever was responsible would come forward and surrender.

Her 12-year-old niece, Sandy Perez-Matias, spoke as if addressing the driver directly — asking why they hadn't simply stayed, why they couldn't have held her.

As of Thursday afternoon, police had announced no arrests, and said the investigation continues — six days after a woman was killed, on camera, steps from the very division tasked with traffic enforcement. Matias finally has a name. The driver still does not.