STEPSON MOURNS HIT-&-RUN VICTIM
Big soccer fan dies on street; cops hunt driver
A soccer-loving Brooklyn senior citizen, after beating cancer and dodging COVID-19, couldn’t escape a lethal hit-and-run driver.
Kamel Mahmoud, 72, was strolling in a Bay Ridge crosswalk just 11 blocks from home when he was struck and killed by a car with a driver who fled the Feb. 15 crash, cops said. The victim died five days later at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn.
“He lived a very happy life,” said the man’s stepson Patrick White as he cleaned out Mahmoud’s apartment on Wednesday morning. “It’s just sad the way it happened. Last year he beat cancer, he avoided COVID. And to have it end the way it did was just terrible.”
Mahmoud overcame liver cancer, his stepson said.
The victim was crossing Bay Ridge Parkway at Sixth Ave. just after 8 p.m. when he was run down, with police saying the fugitive driver was possibly behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz. First responders found Mahmoud sprawled out on the asphalt, but the man’s injuries proved too much to overcome.
“The only consolation is that he went as painlessly as possible,” said the 62-year-old White. “He didn’t suffer any fractures or broken bones, but he did land headfirst. So it was just a few seconds of pain for him. That’s the only consolation I can think of.”
The driver had a green light but should have yielded to Mahmoud, who had the walk signal, when making the turn, cops said.
Egyptian immigrant Mahmoud arrived in Brooklyn nearly three decades ago, leaving behind two children and finding love with White’s mother — who died of a stroke seven years ago. The victim was likely returning from a trip to a nearby mosque when run down, his stepson said.
White recalled how Mahmoud, a retired ship’s rigger at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, managed to overcome a language barrier with the strength of his personality.
“His English was limited, but he was a friendly, friendly, very warm person,” said White. “So you could communicate with him and feel close to him, even though there was a barrier. He was obsessed with soccer. That was the main love of his life.”
The luxury car was traveling north on Sixth Ave. when it made a left turn and slammed into the victim, hitting Mahmoud with the front driver’s side of the vehicle before heading west on Bay Ridge Parkway and disappearing into the night, officials said.
White said a Brooklyn memorial service was planned for Mahmoud, whose body will then be returned to his homeland.
Mahmoud is the 15th pedestrian killed so far this year citywide, cops said. By this time last year, 23 pedestrians had lost their lives.
Mahmoud’s stepson issued a plea for the driver to surrender to authorities.
“Relieve your conscience before it happens again,” White said.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
Former President Donald Trump’s Pentagon leaders placed unusual restrictions on National Guard deployments before January’s bloody attack on the U.S. Capitol and waited more than three hours to send in troops once the riot was underway despite a frantic demand for backup from police on the ground, a military general testified Wednesday.
Maj. Gen. William Walker, the commander of the Washington, D.C., National Guard, told members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee that he got a call from then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund at 1:49 p.m. on Jan. 6 asking for immediate assistance as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building in a violent attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Biden’s election.
Sund’s voice was “cracking with emotion,” Walker recalled.
But Pentagon brass including then-Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who had to sign off on a National Guard deployment because of a newly implemented chain-of-command protocol, didn’t provide Walker with approval until 5:08 p.m. — three hours and 19 minutes later, the general testified.
“I was frustrated,” Walker said. “I was as stunned as anyone else.”
Once approval finally came down, National Guard troops already seated on buses and ready to go were rushed over to the Capitol in less than 20 minutes, Walker said.
At that point, a rioter who later died had already been shot and dozens of Capitol Police officers wounded as Trump’s supporters raged through the halls of Congress, fired up by his command for them to “fight like hell” to overturn Biden’s election. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick later died from injuries sustained during the attack.
Walker suggested the bloodshed could have been prevented if the National Guard was deployed faster.
“We could have pushed back the crowd,” he said.
The stunning revelations from Walker come as Congress is ramping up investigations into the security failures of Jan. 6, with plans for more testimony and a 9/11-style commission underway.
Walker’s remarks also appear to contradict claims by Pentagon brass that they acted as quickly as possible.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified Tuesday that the Pentagon reacted
“superfast” to the riot.
The slow-walking from Pentagon honchos stood in sharp contrast to this past spring and summer, when Walker confirmed he got “immediate approval” from the Defense Department to deploy National Guard troops to respond to unrest at Black Lives Matter protests near Capitol Hill.
Walker also revealed that Miller issued a memo on Jan. 4 requiring express approval from him in the event that armed National Guard troops were needed at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Walker said those restrictions were “unusual.”
As the attack was underway, Walker said senior military leaders told him on a call that they were concerned about “the optics” of deploying armed National Guard troops to the Capitol.
“The Army senior leaders did not think it would look good,” Walker said. “Their best military advice was to have uniformed military guardsmen at the Capitol.”
Robert Salesses, a senior Pentagon official tasked with overseeing homeland defense, testified in the same hearing that the National Guard hiccup appeared to be the doing of Miller, who was picked by Trump to serve on an acting basis after the November firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
“Secretary Miller wanted to make the decisions of how the National Guard was going to be employed on that day,” Salesses said.
In a dire reminder of the threat still posed by far-right extremists, Capitol Police released a statement during the hearing revealing it had uncovered a “possible plot” by a militia group to attack the Capitol again this Thursday. The agency did not identify the militia group, but followers of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory believe Trump will regain power on Thursday, the original presidential inauguration day until 1933.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) told reporters in a break at Wednesday’s hearing that he believes it would be appropriate to call Miller and other former Pentagon officials for testimony in light of the latest revelations.
“We needed to hear from the people who were there at the time making the decisions,” Portman said.
Some Republicans in Congress have claimed without evidence that Democratic leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were somehow to blame for the delay in National Guard action on Jan. 6.
But Walker’s testimony suggests it was rather Trump officials who gummed up the works.
While Miller and the other Pentagon officials delayed reinforcements on Jan. 6, Trump was at the White House watching the riot unfold without issuing any public comment for hours.
In a video he eventually posted to Twitter, Trump urged the attackers to pull back, but also sided with their false belief that the election was stolen from him.
“This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people,” Trump, who was impeached a few days later for inciting the riot, said in the since-deleted video. “We love you. You’re very special ... but go home, and go home in peace.”