Dad left blind: Carjack fiends stole more than just a vehicle
A Bronx carjacking victim, his eyes swathed in bandages, sees only sorrow in his future.
The now legally blind dad will never again gaze upon the faces of his three daughters, fully hear their familiar voices or walk his youngest girl to school. He can no longer smell his wife’s cooking or taste any food.
An unprovoked and still-unsolved July carjacking where he took four bullets to the head stole his senses, leaving the former Yankee Stadium chef despondent and wondering if his assailants will ever pay for their heinous crime.
“I’ve lost my sight, and I’ve lost my hearing,” the man, who asked that his name be withheld, told the Daily News. “I have three daughters. I will never see them grow up. Put yourself in my shoes. It’s a lot.”
It’s a miracle that the victim, whose children are ages 17, 12 and 7, is still alive to recount his terrifying brush with death. He was targeted by a pack of eight callous carjackers, all riding on dirt bikes when they appeared from nowhere as he drove home across the Washington Bridge from Manhattan on the night of July 14.
One bullet tore through his skull near the temple, exiting through the back of his ear. Bullet fragments remain inside his head, leaving him deaf in one ear.
Police have yet to make an arrest in the horrific attack where the bandits stopped his car, opened fire and took off with his vehicle.
“I want you to catch the feeling in your heart and in your mind for a second,” he said. “Understand, I’m 46 years old. I just come out of my house, 15-20 minutes and this occurs. This is taken away from me for the rest of my life.”
The dirt bike desperado who drove off in the victim’s red 2020 Hyundai crashed and abandoned the stolen vehicle less than two miles away on University Ave. Police responding to a ShotSpotter alert found the bleeding man somehow still standing on the side of the road near the bridge.
On the night of the attack, he and his wife had just finished painting their apartment when he went out for a ride in the car. Out of nowhere, one of the dirt bikers popped a wheelie onto his car before using the vehicle to block him from driving away.
A second assailant appeared and tried to yank him out of the Hyundai. And then several more, with one of the men shouting “matalo” — Spanish for “kill him” — before the gunfire erupted.
“They’re trying to get to the car and shooting,” he remembered, his voice suddenly agitated. “Then another shot hit my head, bang! Bow! Bow! There was [another] guy, I don’t know who he was, he called the ambulance ... He backed them off from me.”
As blood poured into his eyes, the victim recalled, he became convinced that lying down would kill him and remained on his feet.
“I couldn’t see,” he recounted. “My eyes were all bloody, like I was in a wrestling match. I wipe off my eyes. But I can’t see. I’m kinda erratic. I’m still standing.”
He finally passed out once an ambulance arrived, awakening in the Lincoln Hospital intensive car unit with wife holding his hand.
“It was really bad,” his wife said. “His head was swollen. And he had just come out of surgery. His eyes were out of his sockets because of the swelling.”
Now the family wants answers. They reached out to an attorney over possible legal action, and remain frustrated by the lack of any arrests in the violent assault that nearly killed him.
“There are so many loopholes in the story that we don’t know,” his wife said. “Something is not sitting right. Was it a set-up? Was it gang related? Nobody should be treated the way we were treated.”
Despite the trauma and the horror, the victim sounded one note of optimism.
“Understand, I’m not done with life yet,” he said. “God put me here for a reason, kept me alive for a reason. And that’s to make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody else. It stops at me.”