DENVER - An up and coming attorney was killed in a hit-and-run crash near the Denver Library Sunday morning.
Karina Pulec, 28, was out with friends when she was struck at 13th and Broadway.
She worked at Hogan Lovells in the firm’s intellectual properties practice.
“Whoever did this was a coward,” said former Denver City Attorney Cole Finegan, now the managing partner at Hogan Lovells. “He not only [took] Karina’s life, but ruined the lives of those who loved her and were part of her life.”
Police aren’t saying much about the case yet.
Scanner traffic indicates that the vehicle involved, a white work truck, was spotted traveling north on Lincoln Street a few minutes after the collision.
It was later found abandoned near West 8th Avenue and Acoma Street.
Police say they are still looking for the driver.
“Karina Pulec was a very gifted young woman,” Finegan said. “She was very intelligent. She was very ambitious. She had a very bright future in front of her. This is just a tragic loss at every level, and it’s utterly senseless.”
Finegan told Denver7 that Pulec graduated from Cornell Law School and moved to the Bay Area, where she worked for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati.
She moved back to Colorado in December 2015.
“I think she wanted to be back here with her family,” Finegan said.
Pulec had worked at the firm for about a year.
Finegan said the intellectual properties practice, where she worked, is a vigorous practice and that Karina had a lot of gifts intellectually and emotionally.
“She had an ability to connect with people,’ he said, “and I think she would have been a terrific lawyer for many, many years.”
Finegan added, “Our hearts are broken here at the firm, and obviously, our thought and prayers go out to her family.”
