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Dad of Michigan Teen Killed in Times Square Pens Emotional Letter to City

By  Trevor Kapp and Aidan Gardiner | May 22, 2017 8:40am 

 The father of the Michigan teen killed by a Navy veteran last week left an emotional letter at the scene.
The father of the Michigan teen killed by a Navy veteran last week left an emotional letter at the scene.
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DNAinfo/Trevor Kapp

TIMES SQUARE — The grief-stricken father of the Michigan teen killed when a drugged-up Navy veteran plowed his car into a crowd on Seventh Avenue last week left behind a gut-wrenching note at the scene where his daughter took her last breath.

“I look at myself and will never understand how I could have ever made such an angel,” Thomas Elsman wrote about his daughter Alyssa Elsman. “I’m glad you got your mothers looks. I don’t know anything currently. I always have the answers… but I am blank.”

Richard Rojas, 26, was charged with murder, vehicular homicide and attempted murder in connection with the attack that left 20 other people — including Alyssa’s 13-year-old sister, Ava — injured, according to police.

 “I look at myself and will never understand how I could have ever made such an angel,” Thomas Elsman wrote in the letter.
“I look at myself and will never understand how I could have ever made such an angel,” Thomas Elsman wrote in the letter.
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DNAinfo/Trevor Kapp

Rojas left his Bronx home around 10:30 a.m. Thursday on a premeditated mission to kill pedestrians, then be killed by police, prosecutors said at his arraignment Friday.

He hopped the curb in his Honda Accord at West 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue and drove north in the wrong direction for three blocks, police said.

Thomas Elsman raced to New York after learning his daughter died.

“My world changed when you came into it and it is unexplainable with you leaving it,” he wrote in the poignant letter framed atop a makeshift memorial at the scene. “I love you kid.”

He thanked New York for the endless support he’s received.

“There is no words that can express our gratitude with the outpouring of love and support this city has shown us,” he wrote. “I have met so many people from different countries, religions, creeds, etc… It doesn’t matter… you have shown us that when you remove bias, racism and ignorance... WE ARE ALL ONE.”

Meanwhile, a weepy Rojas told the New York Post in a jailhouse interview that he was trying to turn his life around before the crash and that he had no recollection of it.

“I was trying to get help,” he said from Rikers Island. “I wanted to fix my life. I wanted to get a job, get a girlfriend.”

“The last thing I remember is driving in my car,” he added. “Then I woke up in the precinct.”