Fatal ‘farmers market’ van crash

A pregnant farm worker delivering vegetables to a Big Apple market was killed Saturday, and her 14-yearold stepdaughter was clinging to life after a horrific accident in The Bronx, police and relatives said.

Driver Jennifer Parisella (inset), 30, was pronounced dead at the scene after her 2003 Ford Econoline van rear-ended a 2014 Volvo truck on the Major Deegan Expressway near Brook Avenue just before 7 a.m., cops said.

Her 14-year-old stepdaughter, Sky Mendoza, who was sitting in the back seat, was rushed to Lincoln Medical Center in critical condition. “She has a 50-50 chance,” a cousin said of the teen girl. “Keep them in your prayers.”

Parisella’s 12-year-old stepson, Orlando Mendoza Jr., who was also in the back seat, was at Jacobi Medical Center with a broken collar bone, according to cops and relatives.

A 28-year-old man riding in the front passenger seat, whom a relative identified as the victim’s brother, was at Lincoln with a leg injury.

The truck driver, also 30, stayed on the scene, and was taken to Lincoln in sta- ble condition.

The family lives in Middletown and works on a farm. They were on their way to the city to bring produce to a farmers market, said a cousin who only gave his first name, Anthony.

About a dozen people gathered at the waiting room at Lincoln Saturday afternoon — most sobbing and hugging each other.

“She was five months pregnant,” said a cousin who declined to give her name. “That would be her first child.”

She had raised both the stepson and the stepdaughter, who was in surgery Saturday afternoon for bleeding to the brain and a broken spine.

In a tragic twist, Parisella — who was carrying a boy — had lost a baby boy last year after carry him through only five months of pregnancy, according to a cousin who declined to give her name.

“She lost her first son last year,” the cousin said. “[The new pregnancy] was going to be like her first born. She couldn’t wait to have him.”

“When they laid you on my chest and I felt your heart beat for one last time, I questioned my existence in this world,” Parisella had written on Facebook of losing the baby.