Families Seek Clues to Killers : Crime: Separate Valley news conferences are held in a hit-and-run death and a street shooting.

One was a 79-year-old grandfather, the other a 23-year-old Pierce College honors student and mother ready to transfer to a university. And though both died violent deaths on busy San Fernando Valley streets, neither of their killers has been caught.

So Thursday, during separate news conferences, two sets of survivors sought the public’s help in finding the culprits: the driver of the speeding car that hit Harry Balbert on Christmas Eve and the man who shot Michele Dawn Smith on a sunny afternoon four days after Thanksgiving.

“I had to bury a daughter, and this fellow is still walking the streets,” said Barry Smith, near the spot on Saticoy Street in Canoga Park where Michele Smith was shot. “He is a danger to our community. He obviously has no [compunction] about killing people.”

Police released a composite drawing of the man they believe is Smith’s killer and said the suspect--believed to be a Latino, 25 to 30 years old, 5-feet-7 to 5-9 and 185 pounds with a thick, neatly trimmed mustache--might have lived in the neighborhood.

In Sherman Oaks, Barbara Gauthier similarly asked for leads to the motorist who struck her father while he was crossing Ventura Boulevard in the middle of a block. Witnesses told police the car was traveling about 40 mph in a 25-mph zone.

The impact was so severe, Gauthier said, that pieces of the car fell off and Balbert was thrown more than 100 feet. His body landed in front of the restaurant where Gauthier and her two daughters were waiting to eat an early Christmas dinner with him. On Thursday, their public plea for leads was made where he died, between La Frite and La Pergola restaurants.

“Our family is not looking to be vindictive, we only want to bury my father in peace,” Gauthier said. “If this person were innocent, wouldn’t it be better to come forward?”

Police say that because Balbert was crossing the street midblock--rather than at a marked pedestrian crossing or intersection--the driver of the vehicle may not have committed a crime unless he was speeding. Fleeing from the scene of a serious accident, however, is a felony.

Smith, a straight-A student who was studying microbiology, was walking to a corner store last month to buy cigarettes and get some change for laundry. Police believe she was shot after the killer struggled with her over her purse.

She left behind a young son. “She was a poet, a painter . . . a good mom to her 3-year-old. . . . She did a little bit of everything,” said her father.

“Nothing in that purse was worth dying for,” said Det. Michelle Johnson. The city has offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the gunman’s arrest and conviction.

Balbert was a retired pen and watch salesman. He carried biscuits in his pockets for dogs, his daughter said, and pens for people.

“Everybody called him Uncle Harry,” she said.