A Brooklyn wigmaker who plowed her car into a family of pedestrians last spring — killing a mother and her two older children — was sentenced Wednesday to three to nine years in prison. But an attorney representing the family said that wasn’t adequate punishment.
Miriam Yarimi, 33, pleaded guilty last month to three counts of reckless manslaughter for the deaths of 34-year-old Natasha Saada and her daughters, 8-year-old Diana and 5-year-old Deborah in Midwood in March. Saada’s 4-year-old son Philip was critically hurt in the crash, suffering skull fractures, brain bleeding and eventually losing a kidney.
Yarimi apologized to the victims' family in court and said through tears that she accepts "full responsibility" for her actions.
“I’ll have to deal with this for the rest of my life and I think that’s a punishment in itself,” she said Wednesday before Judge Danny Chun announced her sentence.
But a sentencing memo by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office outlined several instances where Yarimi, a Midwood resident, appeared to show little to no remorse for the crash.
“Why should I apologize? I’m just as much of a victim as they are,” she was recorded as saying on a call with her ex-husband in April while she was locked up at the Rikers Island jail complex.
On other occasions, according to the DA's office, she said she felt she was being framed and debated whether to “pretend I’m schizophrenic.”
Yarimi’s attorney Joseph Amsel said outside the courthouse that those calls “were taken out of context” and accused prosecutors of cherrypicking.
Under Yarimi’s sentence, she could be paroled after serving three years, the DA’s office said. Prosecutors had recommended the maximum prison sentence of five to 15 years.
The DA’s office detailed the moments leading up to the crash, alleging Yarimi was driving wildly and using her cellphone. She ran several red lights and smashed into an Uber, which sent her Audi careening into the Saadas, who were holding hands as they crossed Ocean Parkway and Quentin Road on their way home from synagogue. Prosecutors said the family had the right of way but Yarimi was going up to 68 mph in a 25 mph zone and never hit the brakes.
The scene where a mother and two children died after being struck by an Audi operated by a 32-year-old woman with a suspended license on March 29.
“They did everything right that day, except having the catastrophic misfortune of being in the way of Miriam Yarimi,” prosecutors said in the memo. “They never made it to the sidewalk.”
The Saada family did not make a victim impact statement inside the courtroom, but attorney Herschel Kulefsky, who was hired to represent them in a pending civil lawsuit, said they were outraged by the sentence.
“This sends a clear message that reckless driving, it’s not so bad,” he told reporters outside the courthouse.
Authorities said Yarimi had received dozens of speeding tickets since 2023 and had a suspended license at the time of the crash. According to prosecutors, when police arrested her after the incident, she was belligerent and tried to get off the stretcher, telling them “the devil is in my eyes. I am haunted inside. I didn't kill anyone. I didn't hurt anyone.”
Yarimi also stated she was raped by police when she was 14, asked where her daughter was and said she needed her lawyer before she spoke to police, prosecutors said. She reportedly won a $2 million settlement from the city last December in a sexual abuse lawsuit where she alleged she was forced into sex with an NYPD officer at age 14.
“People are out to get me. I need CT scans on my entire body. F--- you. I need a whole workup to get whatever is in my body out of it,” Yarimi told officers, according to prosecutors. “Take these clothes off, they're in my way.”
Besides manslaughter, Yarimi was charged with assault, criminally negligent homicide, reckless driving and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. Judge Jevet Johnson ordered her held without bail as her case proceeded, and prosecutors said she has since been involved in several fights while incarcerated at Rikers.
The crash led community members to renew their push for safety improvements along Ocean Parkway, where city data shows at least 15 people have been killed in crashes since 2017. The roadway runs more than 5 miles between Prospect Park and Coney Island and features a pair of tree-lined medians between six lanes of traffic and two service roads.
This story has been updated with additional information.
