FATAL WRECK: Franklin Reyes, 17, is led away yesterday after allegedly smashing a Nissan SUV into a little girl and her grandma while fleeing cops — all because he feared getting a ticket for driving illegally. (James Messerschmidt)
FATAL WRECK: Franklin Reyes, 17, is led away yesterday after allegedly smashing this Nissan SUV into a little girl and her grandma while fleeing cops — all because he feared getting a ticket for driving illegally. (G.N. MIller)
FATAL WRECK: Franklin Reyes, 17, is led away yesterday after allegedly smashing this Nissan SUV into a little girl and her grandma while fleeing cops — all because he feared getting a ticket for driving illegally. (
)
A gutless teen sped away from cops to avoid a ticket for driving alone with a learner’s permit — and fatally struck a 4-year-old girl just steps from her Upper West Side school yesterday, law-enforcement sources said.
Franklin Reyes, 17, was pulled over on West 89th Street at around 8:15 a.m., then allegedly took off as officers approached his SUV and led them on a chase up Amsterdam Avenue.
He jumped the curb at West 97th Street and slammed into Ariel Russo and her grandmother Katia Gutierrez, 58, as they stood helplessly on the sidewalk, which was packed with parents taking their children to school.
“I saw a little girl wearing a skirt face up on the sidewalk. Blood was gushing from her mouth,” said Severiano Rivera, 63. “She didn’t look good, she wasn’t moving. Her grandmother was next to her, face down.”
Ariel, who attended pre-K at the Holy Name School, was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s Hospital. Gutierrez was in stable condition.
Cops initially pulled over Reyes for illegally crossing several lanes to make the turn from Columbus Avenue onto 89th Street.
The officers walked up to both sides of the black Nissan SUV, and Reyes bolted up Amsterdam, cops said.
He later told police he was using his family’s car without permission to get to St. Agnes Boys HS on West End Avenue, and fled because he only has a learner’s permit and was supposed to have a licensed driver with him.
Reyes turned onto West 97th Street at 34 mph, sources said, jumping the curb and pinning the girl and her grandma against the gate of an Asian restaurant.
He then backed up and hit a parked car, cops said, and was arrested at the scene.
Witness Steven Davis, 28, and a nurse rushed to the girl’s side.
“When I felt the pulse, I had a little bit of hope,” Davis said. “About a minute after I got there, she let out like a big breath . . . She was motionless.”
At the hospital, Ariel’s relatives were inconsolable.
“Last night, I saw her dancing in a video and this morning I get a phone call that she’s dead,” said her grandfather, Paolo Russo, 71. “I think she died instantly. She was dead when I got to the hospital.”
He said the entire family is “devastated.”
“They’re crying,” Russo said. “You can imagine how they’re doing. This is a tragedy, and we’re all really sad. We have a lot of pain for this little girl. She was walking with her grandmother to school. Imagine — she died right here on the sidewalk.”
Ariel’s neighbors and her classmates’ parents remembered her as a happy girl who loved her grandmother and always carried around a well-worn doll.
“She had this ugly doll, bald-headed, no hair, and I kept telling the grandmother, ‘Well why does she like that doll?’ ” said one mom at the Holy Name School.
In a letter to parents, the principal said there would be grief counselors available, and administrators planned a prayer service.
Maria Rodriguez, 71, who works for the tenants association at little Ariel’s building on Amsterdam Avenue, said the child lived with her parents, brother and grandmother.
“She’s beautiful. She had beautiful, curly hair. She loved ice cream and her brother used to try to tell her what to do,” she said.
“These are our neighbors. We feel so bad for them.”
A picture of the girl was posted outside the apartment building in a memorial adorned with candles and a teddy bear.
“They are a beautiful family,” said one woman who has lived in the building for 49 years. “She was a doll, an angel, I’ve been crying all day.”
Reyes, who was wearing a Saint Agnes polo shirt, claimed he didn’t remember anything about the accident because he hit his head, sources said.
He was briefly treated at Mount Sinai Hospital and was facing manslaughter and vehicular-manslaughter charges.
“When I came out, cops had the guy on the ground,” said Hector Rosario, 59, who works in the cafeteria at Ariel’s school. “Then everything started coming together that the girl comes from this school.
“The girl was pinned between the gate and the floor, right underneath. And the woman was laying about three or four feet from her. But the girl wasn’t moving when I saw. She wasn’t moving at all.”
Parents were traumatized by the gut-wrenching scene.
“Any other day we would have been standing right there,” said Elizabeth Mahon, 25, a mother of two who witnessed the crash.
“I was on vacation this weekend and forgot her diapers at home. [I] walked out the door, walked right back in, and that put us like 30 seconds later than where we would have been. That could have been us.”
Last night, Reyes was at the 24th Precinct Station House in Manhattan where his lawyer, Martin Schmukler, called Ariel’s death an accident and said the young man should have never been behind the wheel.
“It’s one of these tragic situations,” Schmukler said.
“It’s purely an accident. He shouldn’t have been driving — simple as that.”
Additional reporting by Larry Celona, Amber Sutherland, Yasmine Phillips and Rebecca Harshbarger