A West Philadelphia man has been charged in the hit-and-run death of a 70-year-old Russian immigrant who was trying to cross busy City Avenue.

Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. and Joseph Daly, superintendent of the Lower Merion Township Police Department, yesterday announced the arrest of Enrique F. Webb, 38, of Mantua Avenue near Wyalusing.

Webb was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and related offenses in the Oct. 9 death of Mirian Biniashvili, of Queens, N.Y.

Biniashvili, an Orthodox Jew who came here with his wife, Tamara, from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, was struck at City Avenue and 77th Street as he was returning to his daughter’s Wynnewood home from a synagogue in Overbrook Park.

The couple had come to Philadelphia to celebrate the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot with his daughter’s family.

Castor said authorities were led to Webb by a tip from his uncle.

He said Webb had told officials that he had been driving the dark-blue Chevrolet van that struck Biniashvili and fled the scene because he had no registration or insurance for the van and because his license had been suspended.

Webb was held on $50,000 bail at his arraignment yesterday.

Relatives of Biniashvili and Webb could not immediately be reached.

Biniashvili’s daughter, Leyla Gross, said after the accident that her mother had witnessed her father’s death. Her parents married when Tamara was just 16, family members said.

“We are not looking for revenge,” the elderly couple’s son, Elijah Biniashvili, had said after his father’s death. “Even if [the driver] is not caught,” Elijah said, pointing to the sky, “He will take care of it. Not in a bad way, but maybe someday he will repent.”

P.C