Woman Charged for Allegedly Killing Valley Village Holocaust Survivor

A 68-year-old woman was charged on July 2 for allegedly killing a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Gennady Bolotsky in Valley Village on June 17 in a hit-and-run.

Bolotsky was walking his dog at around 5:40 a.m. when a vehicle struck him at the corner of Magnolia Boulevard and Wilkinson Avenue. Video footage shows the car running over Bolotsky and then driving away. Paramedics eventually arrived to the scene and took Bolotsky to the hospital, where he died.

The woman being charged for killing Bolotsky, identified as Joyce Bernann McKinney, was reportedly arrested on June 21 in a separate incident of alleged battery and public nuisance. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced that McKinney faces a maximum of 11 years in state prison under charges of vehicular manslaughter, hit-and-run driving resulting in death and assault with a deadly weapon. Police say McKinney was homeless and lived in her 2006 GMC Sierra truck.

Bolotsky escaped Nazi-occupied Ukraine in 1941; he immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. His granddaughter, Adriana Bolotsky, told reporters, “No one deserves this, especially not my grandpa who came and survived literally everything. We wish you had a human soul to stop and call, and not leave him lying on the ground.”