The loved ones of a man killed in a hit-and-run along a Virginia highway last month is desperate for answers.
Jonathan Franzell, a 32-year-old member of a road construction crew, was trying to help after a crash on Interstate 66 when a car hit him and kept going, Virginia State Police says.
“It’s been hard; it’s been really hard,” said his girlfriend, Jessica Pullen, fighting tears. “I miss him. I get off of work and I come home and I think he’s going to be here, and he’s not.”
She describes Franzell as a godsend, a devoted father, kind and loving.
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“He had a smile that was out of this world, and his heart was huge,” she said. “He would do anything for you.”
Virginia State Police says Franzell was working on I-66 East Dec. 8 when he noticed a crash near Exit 60 just before 1 a.m.
He was trying to help one of the drivers involved in that crash when a maroon car went through the work zone, striking Franzell and taking off, investigators say. Franzell died at the scene.
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“The last time I spoke to him, he told me he would call me back because he had to go do something, and then I never heard back from him,” Pullen said.
Now his loved ones are making a painful public plea, asking anyone with information to come forward so they can get justice.
“We don’t know anything,” Pullen said. “It’d be nice to know something. His family wants to know.”
