VALLEY VILLAGE — Police asked for the public’s help in locating the hit-and-run driver of a light-colored full-size pickup truck involved in a crash in Valley Village that claimed the life of a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor.

Police said the victim was walking northbound inside the marked crosswalk on Wilkinson Avenue at Magnolia Boulevard around 5:35 a.m. Monday when an unidentified vehicle traveling eastbound on Magnolia Avenue struck him. The driver then failed to stop and help the victim or identify him/herself as required by law, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The man was taken to a hospital where he died from his injuries, police said.

Family members identified him as Gennady Bolotsky.

“(The driver) ran over him and stopped and then just made the decision to keep driving,” the victim’s granddaughter, Erica Bolotsky, told KCAL9.

Bolotsky came to the United States from the Ukraine as a refugee during the Holocaust, granddaughter Adrianna Bolotsky said.

“Escaped Nazi occupation, everything was (against him) and this is how he went,” Bolotsky told KCAL9. “None of us can put these pieces together.”

Still footage from security video of the crash showed a light-colored full-size pickup truck with a camper shell and an attachment on the rear bumper strike Bolotsky as he walked his dog.

Several TV news vans remained Friday in the quiet neighborhood known for its fanciful U.S. Post Office with twin turrets, the Joe Peeps pizza restaurant and Valley Photo Service camera shop on one side, and a hair salon, barber shop, clothing boutique, yarn store and smoke shop on the other.

A small sidewalk memorial was growing on the northwest corner of Magnolia Boulevard and Wilkinson Avenue, where Bolotsky’s neighbor, Angie Fernandez, and her dog Sunny came to pay their respects.

As she meticulously lighted the memorial’s candles, she reflected on the neighbor she would see always walking his dog, and the tragedy of a long life that ended the way it did.

“I’d see him him walking with his dog, and he seemed really nice,” she said. “I wish I would have talked to him. What a way to go.”

Anyone with information about this deadly accident was asked to call Valley Traffic Division Officer Fredo at 818-644-8029 or Officer Reyes at 818-644-8032.

City News Service contributed to this report.