Metro

Bronx woman dies telling mother, ‘I’m OK’ on phone

HORROR: Tearful Angela Escoto was on the phone with her daughter after a crash on the Cross Bronx Expressway (above) when the young woman and her brother were hit by a car and knocked over a barrier. The daughter fell to her death.

HORROR: Tearful Angela Escoto was on the phone with her daughter after a crash on the Cross Bronx Expressway (above) when the young woman and her brother were hit by a car and knocked over a barrier. The daughter fell to her death. (Tomas E. Gaston)

HORROR: Tearful Angela Escoto was on the phone with her daughter after a crash on the Cross Bronx Expressway when the young woman and her brother were hit by a car and knocked over a barrier. The daughter fell to her death (above).

HORROR: Tearful Angela Escoto was on the phone with her daughter after a crash on the Cross Bronx Expressway when the young woman and her brother were hit by a car and knocked over a barrier. The daughter fell to her death (above). (Seth Gottfried )

She didn’t even have time to say goodbye.

A young mother involved in a minor fender-bender on an icy stretch of an elevated Bronx highway yesterday stepped out of the vehicle, phoned her mom and had just managed to say she was “fine’’ when another car knocked her and her brother over a concrete barrier, killing her and critically injuring her sibling in the 75-foot plunge.

STORM CRASH KILLS 3 IN ONE FAMILY

“Jennifer called me and she said that she was in an accident,” said grief-stricken Angela Escoto, 45, of her daughter, Jennifer Sosa, 21.

“The last thing she said to me was, ‘I’m OK, Mom. I was in an accident, but I’m all right, its not that serious. I’m fine.’ ”

“[She said] … she would call me later. And that was it, then the call dropped,” Escoto wept.

“I was so worried. I kept calling and texting her. I left messages. I got no response at all.

“I became frantic. I told my husband that something had to be wrong.

“I wanted to ask her what happened. I never got the chance. It’s too soon. She’s gone too soon,” the woman sobbed.

Jennifer’s brother, promising young boxer Pedro Luis Soto, 19, was left in a coma.

“Why did this happen?’’ the mom wailed.

“I can’t believe this. I want to know how this happened and who caused it,” said Escoto, who spent much of the day praying for her son in the chapel of Jacobi Hospital with her shattered husband and two other daughters.

The horrific accident was caused at least initially by the weekend’s freak snowstorm.

First, there was a smashup eastbound on the Cross Bronx Expressway before 5:45 a.m., authorities said.

Cars were sliding all over the roads during the freezing morning, and black ice may have been a factor, they said.

Then, amid the treacherous road conditions and rubbernecking by other motorists, the packed, 2002 Chevy Ventura in which Jennifer and Pedro were traveling was in a chain-reaction crash involving several vehicles in a westbound lane.

Jennifer, the mother of a 2-year-old boy, and Pedro had gotten out of the minivan to check out the damage when they were struck by a 1999 Toyota Corolla.

Both were thrown over the concrete barrier and down into a sand pit at a construction site, more than seven stories below, on Bruckner Boulevard and Brush Avenue, police said.

“Eyewitnesses reported screams could be heard as the two people fell off the highway,’’ one law-enforcement source said, quoting a preliminary police report from the scene.

The Corolla’s driver, Mitchell Lebron, 56, wept to The Post as he recounted the crash.

“I’m so sorry for the family,’’ said Lebron of Queens, noting that he was on his way to work at the time.

“I started sliding on the black ice and snow . . . I hit the brakes, and I kept sliding. I saw them, and there was nothing I could do.

“I can’t imagine what their family and loved ones are going through,’’ said Lebron, himself a father. “I go over and over it in my mind . . . How do you replace a life?’’

Jennifer was returning from a Long Island bar and restaurant where she worked as a waitress, her distraught parents said.

There were eight other people in the minivan, police said. Some were among the total 14 victims who had to be treated for minor injuries stemming from the pile-up.

“That interchange is brutal. There are always a lot of fatalities there when winter weather hits,” a police source said.

Additional reporting by C.J. Sullivan, Kate Sheehy and Larry Celona