Metro

Good Samaritan’s truck stolen by crash victim he was helping

No good deed goes unpunished.

A driver who caused a car crash on the Bayonne Bridge early yesterday stole the pickup truck of a good Samaritan who had pulled over to help the victims, cops said.

“You can’t trust nobody,” a dejected Francisco Yepez told The Post.

The accident happened shortly before 4 a.m. when a man driving toward Staten Island in a burgundy Ford van crossed the double yellow line in midspan.

Yepez, 64, was driving behind the van and honked his horn to try to warn the wayward motorist.

“I said, ‘Maybe he’s sleeping,’ ” Yepez said.

The warning didn’t do any good and the van smashed head-on into a Volkswagen Passat carrying a man and a woman heading toward New Jersey.

Yepez, who was returning home after a night of work at a milk factory in Teaneck, pulled over to help.

He started walking to the van to see if the driver was OK when an olive-skinned man stumbled out.

Yepez in Spanish asked the driver if he was OK, and when the man didn’t respond, Yepez asked in English.

“He said, ‘Yeah, yeah. OK,’ ” Yepez recalled.

The man said he didn’t have a license and asked Yepez if he could “get him out of there,” but Yepez refused.

Yepez then went over to check on the injured occupants of the Passat, which the callous van driver hadn’t bothered to do.

The couple was badly bleeding and as Yepez offered them help and comforting words, he was shocked to suddenly hear the engine of his Dodge pickup revving.

He turned and saw the crash-causing suspect driving away — in Yepez’s black vehicle.

“I said, ‘My God! He’s stolen my car!’ ” Yepez recalled.

The stunned Yepez flagged down another driver, who took him to the toll booth to reported the accident and the vehicle theft.

The unidentified Passat couple — a 27-year-old man and 32-year-old woman from Forked River, NJ — were reported in serious condition at Richmond University Medical Center.

The man had suffered cuts on his arms, while the woman had lacerations on her head.

Yepez’s truck — with its distinctive “SALSA” license plate — was found abandoned near Deppe Place in the Graniteville section of Staten Island, about two miles away from the bridge on Staten Island.

Port Authority cops were looking for the runaway driver.

Yepez was happy that his pick-up was found in one piece — he was concerned insurance would not have covered the theft — but the ordeal has left him cynical.

“I give you help, and he stole my car,” he said.

His daughter Jennifer said he expects to get the truck, which is being held as evidence by Port Authority investigators, back as early as this weekend.

She said just she feels lucky that he’s OK.

She said when her father started explaining what had happened, “I just started crying. They could have pulled a gun.”

Additional reporting by Dareh Gregorian