Fatally struck at bus stop
Hub had tried to push her out of way of hit-run driver
A young woman was fatally struck at a Brooklyn bus stop by a possibly street-racing, hit-and-run driver early Monday — despite a desperate attempt by her husband to shove her out of the way of the runaway car.
Aniya Blandon, 20, was waiting for a B46 bus at Utica Ave. and Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights about 3 a.m. when a red Dodge Charger jumped the curb and barreled into her.
Medics rushed her to Kings County Hospital, but she could not be saved.
“We were laughing and joking at the bus stop. I was giving her hugs and kisses. The first car passed, and then the other hit a bump and drifted. I pushed her out of the way,” said Kevon Westley, 23, her heartbroken husband.
“I wanted to take the first hit,” he said. “I thought she was saved.”
Westley said he blacked out after that. He suffered a concussion and injuries to his foot, arm and leg.
“I woke up in the ambulance,” he said. “I saw her before she died. She breathed her last breath.”
Dr. Burchell Marcus, who witnessed the aftermath of the deadly crash, said a witness told him the driver was drag racing, hit a bump in the road and lost control, jumping the curb and slamming into a utility pole that fell on the victim and hit her in the head.
Police could not immediately confirm that account. They said the driver was heading south on Utica Ave. alongside two other vehicles when he lost control.
He then abandoned his wrecked car, got into one of the other vehicles and sped off, cops said.
Marcus said he was told a friend of the hit-and-run driver allegedly tried in vain to remove the license plate from the wrecked Charger before the two of them took off.
Westley, who spoke through sobs, dragged his left leg as he walked at his East Harlem home Monday.
“I can hardly feel my right side,” he said. He does maintenance work at the Philip Howard Apartments in Brooklyn, and said he and his wife were both on their way to work. They left their East Harlem apartment about midnight, he said, and had just exited a nearby subway before heading to the bus stop.
“I was dropping her off at the dollar store where she works with her cousin, before I went to work myself,” he said.
“She was a good girl with a beautiful spirit. She was caring and helpful,” said Westley’s mother, Nicole Westley. “It’s terrible. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.”
Blandon was a student at Borough of Manhattan Community College and planned to graduate next year, according to a LinkedIn profile.
Westley posted several photos and videos of Blandon on his Facebook page, along with a vow to catch the driver.
“You was the biggest blessing god has ever sent me,” he wrote Monday. “I wanna thank you for everything you done for me. I wanna thank for being by my side when nobody was.”
“I’ll never move on from this. And I promise I’ll get that m——- f——- who took you from me I promise you that,” he wrote.
Cops were continuing a search for the driver and possible accomplices.