A hit-and-run driver gunning in reverse into a parking spot across from the Queens Courthouse this morning rammed into an elderly pedestrian, then jumped the pavement and crashed through an UPS store window severing the 84-year-old man’s foot, according to police and a witness.
Good Samaritan, John Attanasio, 24, said he was in the back seat of the family car that had stopped at a red light on the corner of Hoover Avenue and Queens Blvd around 8:40 a.m. when he saw a gray Acura backing up at about 20 mph and crash through the plate glass window taking the victim, Theodore Bartwink, with it.
“When the car hit the window ledge it crushed his foot and severed it,” said Attanasio, a union carpenter.
“It looked like the guy [driver] thought he was stepping on the brake when he actually stepped on the gas. The car went through the window about 20 miles an hour. I saw his face. The driver was pretty shocked. He threw the car into drive and sped right off.”
Attanasio said he had been heading to the courthouse to fix a parking ticket when he witnessed the horrific crash, which also knocked down a muni-meter and a parking sign.
He leaped out of the backseat and ran to the aid of the senior citizen and called 911.
He and an unidentified woman, tried to calm the terrified, moaning senior citizen.
“He was saying, ‘help me, help me,’ We told him to hang in there. That he would be all right. I asked him if he wanted us to call anyone and he gave us his wife’s number. She came right away. She was nervous and crying and the police put her in the ambulance with him.
He was conscious all the time. His left foot was just hanging by a piece of skin. Both legs were broken,” he said.
The driver of the gray Acura, William Gallagher, 64, of 50-38 63rd Street, was caught three blocks away by cops. Gallagher was charged with leaving the scene of an accident with injuries, police said.
Bartwink was in critical but stable condition at Jamaica Hospital. “He has a long road ahead of him,” said a family member.
Additional reporting by Lorena Mongelli and Jessica Simeone