Emotional ‘EMT slay’ trial testimony
The stricken former partner of slain EMT Yadira Arroyo described in a Bronx courtroom Tuesday how a routine day suddenly turned tragic when a deranged man hijacked their ambulance.
Monique Williams recalled to jurors in painful detail how she and Arroyo, a beloved 44-year-old mom of five, were driving to a call involving a pregnant woman when a passing motorist signaled to them that a man was riding on their bumper on White Plains Road at about 7 p.m. March 16, 2017.
The FDNY medics pulled over to investigate, and the next thing they knew, 25-year-old suspect Jose Gonzalez — who is on trial for alleged manslaughter — had run around and hopped behind the wheel of their emergency vehicle, she said.
“I remember her screaming, ‘Oh hell, no!’ ” Williams said of Arroyo.
“I was trying to pull his hand off the steering wheel,” Williams said in the courtroom — where about 50 EMTs were in the gallery staring down Gonzalez, who was allegedly high on PCP when the incident unfolded.
Gonzalez was able to kick the ambulance into gear even as he fought the two medics, Williams said.
Another witness said the suspect then suddenly backed up the ambulance and hit a car before lurching forward into an intersection. That’s when Arroyo fell, and the emergency vehicle fatally ran her over.
Williams said she quickly noticed she no longer heard her pal “Yadi.”
“I lost sight of her,” said the former medic, who retired the day of the horror. “When we started to go forward, I felt some tumbling underneath us.”
She found Arroyo lying still. “I ran over to her to try to get her up,” Williams said quietly. “She didn’t get up. I stayed there with her. She didn’t move no more, so I just stood there with her.”
Arroyo’s aunt, Ali Acevedo-Hernandez, told The Post outside court the account drove her to tears.
“The thing that got to me . . . was when [Williams] said that she felt something tumbling under the wheels,” Acevedo-Hernandez said. “And I know it was Yadi.”
At one point during Tuesday’s trial, prosecutors displayed gruesome photo evidence of the ambulance’s blood-splattered driver’s side and smashed driver’s-side headlight, prompting the crowd of EMTs there to gasp.
Prosecutors have charged Gonzalez with first-degree manslaughter, robbery, vehicular manslaughter and operating a motor vehicle under the influence.
He was declared unfit for trial last year, but health professionals at Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center reversed that decision in September.