‘HE’S A LIAR!’
Queens mom says driver targeted her son with minivan
THE MOTHER of a Queens teen whose promising football career was cut short by a callous driver enraged over an egg-tossing incident isn’t buying his excuses.
Maria Miraba blasted jailed wheelman Richard Keith for telling the Daily News he thought he ran over a garbage can when he crushed 17-year-old Christopher Miraba under the wheels of his minivan.
“He’s a liar! He knew exactly what he was doing,” the heartbroken mother said as she sat on the edge of her son’s hospital bed, tubes and wires snaking past her. Christopher, who suffered fractures to his skull, spine and pelvis and trauma to his neck, remains immobile with an army of machines at his side.
The teen, with rods and screws already surgically placed in his back, faces another six to eight weeks of recovery at Elmhurst Hospital, his mother said.
“It’s a miracle he’s alive. This man destroyed his life. There’s like a dark cloud over him right now,” she said.
Miraba, 42, is planning to hit Keith with a lawsuit for the pain and suffering her son has and will endure.
In a recent jailhouse interview, Keith told The News he had no idea he mowed down the boy after a group of teens hurled eggs at his car in Long Island City on Halloween night.
“I thought I hit a trash can, which is why I was moving (his car) back and forth,” Keith, 50, said from Rikers Island. “I didn’t know there was a kid under me.”
Prosecutors and witnesses say Keith intentionally targeted the Long Island City High School starting quarterback with his 2008 Dodge minivan.
Keith drove off after rolling his tires over Miraba three times, according to a criminal complaint. He was charged with attempted murder.
“What he did was all from hatred, he knew what he was doing. What was he thinking?” Miraba asked.
The mother of four, whose oldest son is a Marine on presidential guard duty, said she will file a lawsuit in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Monday against Keith, a father of four with a lengthy rap sheet.
Miraba’s son is facing an uncertain future.
Christopher may never return to the football field where he carved out a name for himself.
“He’s probably the best quarterback in our league,” said the teen’s coach, Joe Houghton. “He only played seven of the nine games for the season and even with him missing the last two games he earned the League’s Leader Award for the most touchdown passes.”
Christopher, who lost his father to cancer less than a year ago, receives daily visits in the hospital from his teammates, friends and family, his mom said.
“My son is loved by so many, it’s hard to see him like this,” she said. “He’s such a social butterfly and because of what (Keith) did, my son is in a closed cage right now.”
Keith, ordered held without bail, faces up to 25 years in a prison if convicted.
“While this lawsuit will be filed for damages which Christopher is entitled to for the horrible injuries he sustained and the terrible effect on his life, his family has a first priority, which is to hold Richard Keith accountable criminally for what he did,” said Sanford Rubenstein, the family’s attorney.
Christopher’s coach, meanwhile, has started a GoFundMe page, calling the critically injured teen “an amazing young man, with a ton of friends, and no enemies.”
The page has raised nearly $8,500.
“He definitely has potential to play at the next level... I just want him to have a normal successful life,” Houghton said.