Wig-making social media influencer Miriam Yarimi denied killing anyone and said she was “haunted inside” after mowing down a mother and her two young children in a Brooklyn crosswalk, prosecutors said Thursday during her first court appearance.
Yarimi, 32, has been held for psychological evaluation at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn since the horrific Saturday afternoon crash. She appeared via video stream from her hospital room in Brooklyn Criminal Court dressed in a yellow hospital gown as she sat alongside her lawyer to face multiple counts of manslaughter, assault and other offenses. She was ordered held without bail.
“The devil is in my eyes. I am haunted inside. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. Prove it. Show me the proof. You have no proof,” Yarimi said in a statement after the crash, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Nocella said. “I was raped by cops when I was 14. I need CT scans in my eyes. I need to get the scanning done now…. Where’s my daughter? My daughter’s always in my heart…. I need to use the bathroom. I don’t want to pee in the pan.”
Yarimi had a suspended license when she got behind the wheel of her car, an Audi A3 with a vanity plate reading “WIGM8KER,” a reference to her wig making business, about 1 p.m. Saturday, cops said.
She was going north on Ocean Parkway, driving twice the speed limit, police sources said, when she sped through a red light, crashed into a Toyota Camry with TLC plates and hit Natasha Saada, 35, and her three young children as they crossed Ocean Parkway. Yarimi’s car flipped upside down in the crash.
Saada died of her injuries, as did her two daughters, Deborah, 5, and Diana, 8. Saada’s 4-year-old son was critically hurt.
After the crash, Yarimi told Hatzalah medics she was possessed and claimed the CIA had been following her, according to law enforcement sources.
Her remarks about being raped by cops refers to the allegations in a lawsuit she filed in 2023 that a police officer groomed and raped her throughout her teenage years after she was arrested for shoplifting. The city settled her suit for $2 million in December.
