La Crescenta teen killed in accident

Fred Ortega and Edgar Melik-Stepanyan

A 15-year-old La Crescenta girl was struck and killed by a car

Saturday night while attending her younger sister’s Little League

tournament in San Bernardino, officials with that city’s police

department said.

Annemarie Polizzotto was attempting to cross Hospitality Lane, a

four-lane road near busy Waterman Avenue, at approximately 10:29 p.m.

when she ran into the path of a 1993 Jeep Cherokee traveling

eastbound on the roadway. Responding rescue personnel transported

Polizzotto to Loma Linda University Medical Center, where she was

pronounced dead, Sgt. Tony Gorrell of the San Bernardino Police

Department said in a statement to the media.

The driver of the jeep, who was not identified by police, was not

cited, Gorrell said. Police detectives are treating the incident as

an accident.

Polizzotto was trying to get a group of youths to leave the

Comfort Inn they were staying at and check out a spa at a hotel

across the road when the accident happened, said Dave Ritchie, a

Little League District 16 administrator and close friend to the

Polizzotto family.

“She just ran out onto the street and was hit,” Ritchie said,

speaking from a Little League game in Montrose and quoting reports

from a mother of one of the children participating in the San

Bernardino tournament.

Polizzotto was a natural leader, and it was normal for her to get

her friends excited about anything, Ritchie said.

“Annemarie was an exuberant kid who was always smiling,” said

Ritchie. “The girls would see her and would run up and hug her, that

was the kind of kid she was.”

Polizzotto was born in San Francisco and moved to La Crescenta

with her mother, Tami, and sister Maddalena, 11, after her parents’

divorce. Her father, Gino, is an architect and lives in Huntington

Beach.

Born with a spinal disorder, Polizzotto did not let her disability

get in the way of her aspirations as an athlete, her grandmother,

Susie MacGregor, said.

“They didn’t know if she would ever walk, but she overcame her

physical difficulties and never let any of her problems become a

factor,” MacGregor, a Sunland resident who had accompanied her

daughter and granddaughters to San Bernardino for the tournament,

said. “She was an incredible athlete, and didn’t let anything bother

her.”

Having graduated from Little League, Polizzotto joined the

Crescenta Valley High School junior varsity softball team her

freshman year. She was a particularly good baserunner, said John

Heurkins, who coached her in Little League.

“She only knew one speed, and that was 110%,” Heurkins said. “She

was one of those kids you could count on. As a coach, you couldn’t

ask for a better player, and as a friend, you couldn’t ask for a

better friend.”

A gathering was held Sunday at the home of Jim Mulligan, who

coached Polizzotto on her first softball team, the OK Trophies.

Many of the young girl’s friends attended the impromptu meeting,

wrote stories about her and talked to a crisis counselor.

“She gave us more in her 15 years than the majority of people will

give in their lifetime,” Mulligan, who led Polizzotto and her

teammates to the Crescenta Sports Assn. championship in 1997, said.

“She was a player who never had to elevate her game to the next level

for the playoffs because all she gave was the next level. She cared

about everybody else first, and Annemarie second.”

Not only was she a natural leader, but also a good person at

heart, MacGregor said.

“She was like the Pied Piper with her friends, but to us she was

Angel,” Polizzotto’s grandmother said, using the nickname the family

had coined for her. “She wanted to be a doctor and was an excellent

student, immersing herself in science and forensics. And she was a

great sister, doing everything she could to spoil her little sister.”

Maddalena, whose team is in the running for the Little League

World Series, had another game Sunday and would likely not sit it

out, MacGregor said.

“She is going to play today, along with her all-star teammates, to

honor Annemarie, because that is what she would have wanted,”

MacGregor said.

Services for Polizzotto are not yet planned, but will be arranged

by Crippen Mortuary in Montrose, Mac Gregor said.

Little League teams playing at Montrose Park on Sunday held a

moment of silence for Polizzotto and handed out flowers in her honor.