On a rainy late afternoon in November 1985, Mary Yocono walked to a friend’s house across the street from her family’s West Akron, Ohio, restaurant to deliver an early Christmas present. 

But night fell fast, and in the darkness of her return trip across West Exchange Street, a car struck the 79-year-old grandmother, leaving her on the asphalt next to her umbrella.

After being alerted to the accident, her relatives rushed out of Yocono’s Italian restaurant and ran down the street, shocked to see their matriarch’s lifeless body beneath a white sheet.  

“It’s something you see in a movie,” Jamie Yocono, Mary’s granddaughter, tearfully recalled in a recent interview. “When it happens to you in real life, it feels like it’s fake. It’s so surreal. No one expects it.” 

Thirty-seven years later, the identity of the person who struck and killed Mary Yocono remains a mystery. Akron detectives, who no longer have a case file, don’t hold out much hope, but her family hasn’t given up. 

The Yocono family has a long and colorful history in Akron that included operating the popular local restaurant for nearly 30 years.

Yocono’s was mysteriously bombed during the lunch hour in March 1980. The person who was responsible was never found.