Fatal crash tied to parked trucks

A TOP communications staffer for Mayor de Blasio had his iPhone snatched from his hand on a crowded Manhattan subway, police sources said Wednesday.

Mahen Gunaratna, the mayor’s deputy director of communications, chased two young men out of the Fulton St. station after his phone was grabbed — but they got away.

Gunaratna, 30, was mugged around 5:20 p.m. Tuesday, minutes after he hopped onto the Brooklyn-bound IRT at Union Square, sources said. When the train pulled into the Fulton St. station, Gunaratna was standing and holding onto a pole with his right hand. Just as the doors were about to close, the suspects grabbed the iPhone from his left hand and bolted.

The City Hall staffer chased the pair south to Broadway and Maiden Lane, but they zipped west on Liberty St., by Zuccotti Park, and vanished, according to the sources.

The thieves are described as black and 17 to 20 years old. One is about 5-foot-8 and 140 pounds, and the other is about 5-foot-10 and 175 pounds.

Gunaratna, who could not be reached for comment, served as de Blasio’s director of research and media analysis. He left City Hall in January 2016 to work for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run and returned in January.

“It’s certainly unsettling and a major inconvenience,” de Blasio spokesman Austin Finan said. QUEENS RESIDENTS near the site of a fatal crash Tuesday on a Long Island Expressway off-ramp said a longstanding dangerous condition there contributed to it.

Since at least 1993, long-haul truckers have been using the westbound stretch of road near 69th St. and the expressway in Maspeth as a spot to park and get some sleep.

On Tuesday, Kevin Hurtes, 27, of Westbury, L.I., died when he left the expressway and slammed into the back of one of those trucks.

“I’ve been living here since 1993 and trucks have been parking there the whole time,” said Kim Ronzo, 42, who works in banking. “Trucks have rest stops. They shouldn’t be stopping there when it’s a busy exit.”

The city Department of Transportation has posted a 30-mph speed limit sign, but a woman who knows the area said it’s not enough. “If you don’t regularly take this exit ramp you wouldn’t know to slow down well below the speed limit,” she wrote in an email.