36Chain-reaction crush death
Brooklyn man caught between parked cars as witnesses watch in horror
A Brooklyn father cleaning out his car was killed in front of his parents’ home Saturday when a chain-reaction crash crushed him between two parked vehicles, police and family said.
Everton Stewart, 48, was cleaning out his car on E. 89 St. near Avenue L in Canarsie about 9:35 a.m. when a black 2014 Acura MDX came down the street and swerved to avoid a passing car, police said.
As the black Acura swerved, its driver “accelerated for unknown reasons,” cops said.
The Acura slammed into a legally parked car owned by Stewart’s father, said cops and witnesses. The collision crushed Stewart between his father’s car and another vehicle, which police said was also legally parked.
Stewart tried to escape the crash by racing to the nearby sidewalk, said cops and witnesses — but he didn’t move quickly
enough.
The 46-year-old woman behind the wheel of the black Acura — who had a child in her vehicle — panicked, a witness and close friend of Stewart’s told the Daily News.
“She was screaming and
crying,” said Domaine Waysome, 37, who ran outside in his pajamas after hearing the crash. “A neighbor was trying to comfort her.”
As Waysome approached the grisly scene, he saw Stewart’s lifeless body next to the curb.
Medics rushed Stewart to Brookdale University Hospital, but he could not be saved.
The driver was taken into police custody, but was not immediately charged, police said.
“She kept saying, ‘Why me, why did this have to happen to me?’ ” a neighbor said of the driver.
Hours after the horrific crash, Stewart’s grieving father was hosing down the spot where his son died earlier that morning.
“He just brought my daughter to the airport,” said Terrence Stewart, 73. “He was just cleaning up while his mother worked about the breakfast. He never lived to eat the breakfast.”
Stewart, who worked at Bellevue Hospital, had plans to travel to Long Island with Waysome later in the day to look at homes and schools in the hopes of moving his daughter to the suburbs.
“That’s where we were about to go. He said he wanted the best for his daughter,” said Waysome. “We were supposed to leave [Friday], but he was taking his sister out to dinner. He said he was going to spend time with his mom, and we’ll go on the road. He never made it.”
“I see things happen everyday,” said Waysome, who works as a truck driver. “But this is one of the worst I’ve ever experienced.”