A 15-year-old Bronx boy waiting for a bus to school was stabbed yesterday by an enraged BMW driver – simply because the teen had put his backpack on the car, police said.
Gabriel Quinones – clad in the spiffy blue blazer required by his school – was waiting for the Bx29 bus along the Hutchinson River Parkway service road in Co-Op City when he innocently set the bag on the hood of a parked 2005 gray BMW X5, cops said.
As he tried to take a book out of his bag, the driver got out of the car, and the two got into a shouting match.
The war of words, which took place just outside PS 160/The Walt Disney School, escalated within seconds.
The enraged motorist suddenly pulled a knife and stabbed Quinones six times in the head, chest and arm, police said.
The madman then jumped back into the Beemer and sped off. Cops were still searching for the driver late last night.
The car is registered to a woman who lives in Co-Op City. She spoke to detectives last night, and “that may have just been the break we needed,” said one police source.
Relatives said Quinones, a sophomore at the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics, where he transferred this year, is a “good kid.”
Leslie Quinones, 18, said her brother’s jaw was broken a few months ago by kids in school who had started the fight.
“He’s very calm. He doesn’t talk a lot,” she said. “He minds his own business. He’s not a troublemaker at all.”
Gabriel Quinones was taken to Jacobi Hospital for surgery and was in critical but stable condition afterward.
“He’s doing OK,” said his relieved mom, Amada Gomez. “I’m content with that. He’s awake.”
Leslie said her brother was “cut all over the place” and was resting following the operation.
The victim’s grandmother, Gabriela Gomez, 78, said he “came out of the surgery all right,” she said. “I was crying. I got teary.”
The school Gabriel attends is modeled after a highly successful high school in East Harlem, the Manhattan Center for Math and Science.
The elite academy opened in 2005 and has 422 students.
Additional reporting by Ikimulisa Livingston, Erin Calabrese, John Doyle, Erik Shilling, Peter Holley and Yoav Gonen