GRAN’S LIFE OF PAIN
Little SUV chase vic Ariel always on her mind
HER BODY IS slowly healing. Her heart will stay broken forever.
The sobbing grandmother of 4-year-old Ariel Russo was released Wednesday from a Manhattan hospital, her recovery eclipsed by her misery over the June 4 car wreck that killed the child.
“I think of Ariel every second, every moment,” whispered a devastated Katia Gutierrez, her voice dissolving into tears. “Every breath I take, I think of Ariel. She was happy. She was beautiful.
“She always said, ‘I love you.’ ”
Gutierrez, 44, was walking her granddaughter to school that morning when a runaway SUV driven by a 17-year-old fleeing from the cops slammed into the pair.
Gutierrez spent 22 days at St. Luke’s Hospital recovering from a broken back, a broken ankle and other injuries.
“I don’t remember that day,” Gutierrez said from a couch at her upper West Side home — her left arm in a sling, her left leg still immobilized.
“I was teaching her to cross the street,” she recounted. “We would always wait for the light. It would turn green and she would say, ‘Go, Grandma!’ ”
During the Wednesday morning ambulance ride home, Ariel’s mother, Sofia, had a surprise for the grandmom: A touching photo of the little girl from her last day of school.
Ariel was snapped behind a cross built from blocks. The girl, who typically created castles with her blocks, instead made the religious symbol June 3.
“I saw Jesus in the cross,” Ariel told her teacher — who emailed the photograph to the family after the tragedy.
“It was beautiful,” said Gutierrez after seeing the shot. “She was full of love. It was very uplifting.”
The teen driver busted in the case bolted from a police traffic stop because he was driving his parents’ SUV with just a learner’s permit — and without their permission, officials said.
The SUV jumped the curb at Amsterdam Ave. and W. 97th St. as Ariel and her grandmother were walking to nearby Children Holy Name School.
Driver Franklin Reyes remains jailed without bail, accused of manslaughter and assault, and the Russo family wants him to stay put.
“They fear that the same way he fled the police after they stopped him, he could flee while out on bail,” said lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, who represents the Russos.
The family announced they will sue the city for $40 million, citing a bungled 911 call as evidence that emergency responders were careless and negligent.