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 Uber 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.
The Uber was carrying a mom, Mahbuba Ahmedova, 35, and her three children. “Everything happened so fast,” her son, Shakhzod, told the Daily News. “We didn’t see the other car until it flipped over. We saw everyone panicking and people going towards the kids on the ground trying to help them. They were giving CPR to the kids.”
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.
After the crash, Yarimi repeatedly told police at the hospital that she wanted to use a regular bathroom, not a pan, and asked for her phone, Nocella said in court.
“People are out to get me,” she said. “I need CT scans on my entire body. F— you. I need a whole work up to get whatever is in my body out of it. I did not hurt anyone. All the evidence is on my phone.”
Yarimi on Thursday said she consented to the virtual arraignment from her hospital bed but otherwise was quiet and composed during the proceedings.
Nocella called her a flight risk and asked she be held without bail due to the “nature and severity” of the allegations. She also asked that her license be suspended.
Yarimi’s defense lawyer, Joseph Amsel, asked she be released on no bail or on a cash bail, stating that she has no criminal record and has ties to her Brooklyn community.
“She is not a flight risk. She is well known. Where is she gonna go, your honor?” he asked. “I think remand is grossly inappropriate.”
He also said the complaint against Yarimi made no allegations about her driving speed or about whether she saw the victims before striking them.
Judge Jevet Johnson agreed that Yarimi was a flight risk and ordered her held without bail.
Nocella said prosecutors are ready to present a grand jury indictment on the manslaughter charges.
Amsel said he was still weighing whether Yarimi would testify before the grand jury, though he conceded she probably won’t take the stand.
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