Woman badly hurt in chain-reaction smashup
A WOMAN’S arm was nearly severed when a yellow cab jumped an Upper West Side curb and toppled a halal food cart onto her, witnesses said Monday.
The horrific chain-reaction crash started when a black Honda sedan collided with the taxi and sent the cab hurtling onto the sidewalk along Broadway between W. 61st and W. 62nd Sts.
The cab smashed into the food cart, which then crashed into a utility truck before trapping the helpless pedestrian.
Authorities said the unidentified woman is in critical condition at Bellevue Hospital.
Dumbfounded witnesses said the heartless Honda driver sped off. Police were still investigating the scene Monday night, trying to find video of the car, authorities said.
A man identifying himself as Dan helped lift the cart and free the woman.
“The last thing I remember hearing was someone screaming ‘Help! Help! My arm, my arm!’ ” the 28-year-old man said. “I looked down and there’s a lady pinned under the cart. I yelled ‘Help!’ and me and a couple of guys lifted the stand off the lady’s arm.”
Dan said he was traumatized by what he saw and heard.
“I know I’ll never forget her scream and I hope she’s OK. God bless her.” the man had harsher words for the driver of the hit-and-run Honda. “People like that don’t deserve a thought from civilized human beings,” he said. “I hope whoever did this gets what they deserve.” Michael Parvez, 59, the taxi driver, said he had just picked up two passengers at W. 61st St. “Then some guy came around and he hit me, so I hit the brakes, and then he hit again, hard,” Parvez said. “And I could not control my car. I lost control ’cause he hit hard.” The food cart worker escaped serious injury, said Jose Rodriguez, 53, another witness. “He was bloody, his face was bloody all over, but he was conscious and walking,” Rodriguez said.
The witness added two nurses rushed to the seriously injured woman’s aid, putting her in a neck brace until an ambulance arrived.
Five other people also were injured in the smashup, an FDNY spokesman said.
Actor Tommy Bayiokos, who has appeared “Blue Bloods,” “The Good Wife” and “The Dark Knight Rises,” said he happened on the scene right after the crash.
“I was in my usual path coming back from SAG (the Screen Actors Guild),” he said, adding that had be been there moments earlier, he could also have been struck.
“Practicing my lines saved me. Looked like a bad situation.”