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Zèlia Ponte Araujo attended church on Sunday and was planning to spend the afternoon with her husband, who lives in a nursing home on St-Urbain St. On her way home, she stopped by her local Provigo store on Mont-Royal Blvd. to pick up ingredients for a soup she had started to make.

“The potatoes were on the stove top and the tomatoes and kale on the counter,” Araujo’s daughter, Maria, said of her 79-year-old mother.

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But Araujo never made it back to her home on Clark St. that afternoon. After leaving the grocery store, she was crossing St-Urbain St. on a green light, her daughter said, when she was killed by the driver of a Chevrolet Silverado, who fled the scene.

A short time later, police showed up at Maria Araujo’s home to say her mother had died in a hit-and-run.

On Tuesday, police in North Bay, Ont. arrested a 33-year-old man who was driving the truck involved in the accident. Montreal police are investigating whether the driver was the same person who was behind the wheel of the truck when it struck the elderly woman in the Plateau-Mont-Royal. The driver was stopped by the Ontario Provincial Police for a Highway Code infraction.

Maria Araujo said she can’t believe her mother has passed away, because she was so full of life and had no illnesses. “My mom loved telling jokes, laughing, telling stories and making people happy,” her daughter said.