Woman Searches for Husband's Killer Online

Nov. 15, 2007 — -- A 23-year-old Arizona woman has posted ads across the Internet seeking information about a hit-and-run driver who killed her husband in front of his two young children last month.

In ads on the bulletin board Web sites Craigslist and Backpage and on her MySpace page, Katherine Coronel, mother of two and six months pregnant with a third child, is hoping the public can do what the police have been unable to -- find the person who killed her husband, Eddy Mediavilla, while he was changing a tire.

"The police have no new information, no new leads, nothing. Basically, I felt that I needed to do this myself. I needed to use Craigslist, Backpage and Myspace to find the person who killed Eddy and tell them what they did was wrong, that they took the life of a wonderful guy and father," Coronel told ABCNEWS.com.

People looking for missing loved ones or suspects that flee from the scenes of crimes are increasingly turning to the Internet, said Susan MacTavish Best, a spokesperson for Craigslist.

"People posting such ads is not new on Craigslist though we're certainly hearing more of them in no doubt due to the site's growth. Craigslist has 30 million users a month (that's many eyeballs!) so there is actually a more than reasonable chance that the site will prove useful whether it's tracking down someone who stole a bike or finding a relative," she wrote in an e-mail.

The incident that killed Mediavilla occurred as the couple drove home southbound at around 2:45 a.m. on Interstate 17 between Flagstaff and Phoenix on Oct. 28, and pulled over to fix a flat tire.

Within seconds, Coronel said she went from thinking about the fixer-upper in the mountains they had looked to buy that day to trying to give her husband CPR.

Coronel described the car that hit her husband three weeks before his 23rd birthday as "a dark-colored, 1980s sedan."

The car that hit Mediavilla, she said, "stopped for a second, backed up and then ran off."

"Whoever killed him knows they killed him, what they don't know is that they killed him in front of his kids," she said.

"If there is damage on our car, there has to be damage on their car. For them to do what they did is unspeakable. They need to come forward. It is not right that they're out there walking the street while my kids don't have a father."

Coronel did not get a good look at the driver of the car or its license plate because she ran to her husband's aid.

"I rushed to Eddy's side. He wasn't breathing. I was so caught up in trying to get Eddy to talk to me that I didn't look at the car. I was screaming at the top of my lungs… I tried CPR and had blood all over my clothes and hands but when I saw his eyes I knew he was gone."