Cruel hit-&-walk
Driver drags trash man, strolls off: witnesses
A minivan driver who struck a Brooklyn sanitation worker Saturday watched in silence as her passenger tried to help the injured victim — then grabbed her keys and walked away, stunned witnesses told the Daily News.
Cogent Waste Solutions employee Angel Aguilar-Duran, 52, told police he was helping his truck-driving partner reverse down Hope St. in Williamsburg about 8 a.m.
The blue minivan driver, unwilling to wait, cut around another car and slammed into Aguilar-Duran, dragging him about 50 feet, he told cops.
Garbage truck driver Alessandro Accardo recalled how Aguilar-Duran was “backing me up at an angle” when the minivan driver “came out of nowhere.”
“He was under the wheels and she dragged him,” Accardo, 59, told The News.
Moments later, Accardo saw people running toward the idling minivan, with Aguilar-Duran’s legs sticking out from under the vehicle. Several witnesses ran to a nearby firehouse to get help.
“He’s under the car, flat,” Accardo said. “His head is on the ground and his face is all cut up and everything is really bad.”
One woman, still shaken by the harrowing scene near Havemeyer St., said “there was no crash sound.”
“[The minivan] slows down and suddenly stops, then everyone behind the car leapt out and started shouting,” the neighbor said, declining to give her name.
As witnesses waited for first responders, a man sitting in the minivan’s passenger seat tried to pull Aguilar-Duran out.
“Everyone was yelling at him not to move [Aguilar-Duran],” said the neighbor.
The passenger then got a car jack from the back of the minivan to hoist the vehicle up, she said.
“[Aguilar-Duran] was
moaning, but he wasn’t saying anything,” the neighbor said. “His face was incredibly bloody and mangled.”
Meanwhile, the minivan driver sat in silence, then eventually “got her keys out and started walking away,” the neighbor recalled.
“None of us stopped her, that wasn’t our concern. We were worried about [Aguilar-Duran],” said the neighbor.
“It suddenly became clear that she wasn’t coming back. She didn’t even run,” she said.
A few minutes later, the passenger followed, leaving Aguilar-Duran lying on the ground.
“There were other people trying to explain to [him] it’ll be much better if your friend [the driver] stays,” the neighbor said. “Everyone is screaming at [him] not to leave.”
EMS took a bloodied Aguilar-Duran to Bellevue Hospital with bruises and cuts across his body. The Bushwick man was expected to survive, police said.
Cogent Waste Solutions could not be reached for comment Saturday.
There have been no arrests.