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The hit-and-run driver who mowed down a heroic Staten Island grandmother had been drinking all day, first at the Mets’ home opener at Citi Field and then his local gin mill, the grieving family charges.
Brian McGurk boozed it up for hours before he slammed his SUV into Clara Almazo, 58, as she crossed Cary Avenue on April 5, according to a new lawsuit that blames the Mets and the bar for overserving him.
Almazo used her final moments to bravely push her 8-year-old grandson, Brian Ramirez, to safety. The impact threw Almazo — who was walking home from Holy Thursday Mass — 150 feet.
McGurk, 40, sped away from the bloody scene and waited nearly five hours before turning himself in at the 120th Precinct, with his police-officer brother at his side. He refused to take an alcohol breath test, and he was charged only with leaving the scene.
But McGurk had spent the afternoon drinking in a stadium luxury box watching the Mets with fellow patrons of Nurnberger Bierhaus, which had bused the group to and from the game, the suit and a law-enforcement source said.
After the bus returned from the 1:10 p.m. game, he pulled up a stool at the Castleton Avenue bar and continued to drink, the lawsuit alleges. He was leaving the watering hole when he got behind the wheel of his black Ford Escape and caused the 9:50 p.m. crash, Almazo family lawyer Eric Richman said.
“We believe that he had been drinking all day,” Richman said. “We believe that is the reason that he left the scene.”
McGurk, a mailman, has close ties to the German-themed tavern, which is owned by his friend Robert Kelly, and where his band, once named “F–k of the Irish,” often played. Kelly denied that McGurk was at his bar the night of the crash.
The Almazo family is also suing Kelly, McGurk and Aramark Sports and Entertainment — which handles food and alcohol sales at Citi field.
Staff at Citi Field “unlawfully, recklessly and negligently served and continued to serve [him] . . . when they knew or should have known that he was or was becoming intoxicated,” according to the suit, filed last week in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Though McGurk’s lawyer, Matthew Zuntag, praised his client for “doing the right thing” and turning himself in, the Almazo family lawyer slammed him as a coward.
“The right thing to do would have been to stop and help her, and help her grandson and talk to the police,” Richman said.
“He can change the name of his band, he can shave his goatee, he can hire an expensive lawyer to say he did the right thing — but it doesn’t make him any less of a coward, or any less responsible for this incident.”
McGurk has removed the long, scraggly goatee he sported at the time of the crash.
The investigation has been slowed by a lack of witnesses willing to pin down McGurk’s activities before the crash, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
Richman said it was “an injustice” that cops didn’t test McGurk for alcohol.
But an NYPD spokesman said “they had no probable cause” to charge McGurk with DWI because he displayed no signs of intoxication when he surrendered.
The Mets declined comment and Aramark did not return calls.