An NYPD traffic cop was fatally mowed down by a massive truck in hectic Midtown on Saturday afternoon after he paused from his duties to make a cellphone call.
Witnesses said the victim, — Kalyanarat Ranasinghe, 71 — had been directing traffic on 44th Street, mid-block between Fifth and Madison avenues.
At 2:30 p.m., the dad of one from Queens stopped in front of a parked Vacuum Truck Rentals vehicle to make what would be his final phone call.
“He was talking on his cellphone,” recounted Anthony Trinidad, a doorman on the block. “The guy was in front of the truck, directly in front of the front right headlight.”
Suddenly, the truck — a combination water pump and displacement blower — began moving forward, its driver apparently unaware that the traffic cop was standing there, the doorman said.
“The truck clipped him, rolled over him,” Trinidad said. “His leg got caught up in the truck.”
The large vehicle knocked Ranasinghe over and “rolled him up into the tire,” Trinidad remembered. Afterward, “He seemed lifeless.There was no movement at all from the guy.”
Ironically, Ranasinghe had been asking to switch from directing traffic to writing summonses, said a union rep.
“He was a great man,” remembered Waragoda Dananjaya, the traffic cop’s son-in-law. “He would help any person, family or not,” Dananjaya said. “He looked after his wife, Dammika, and daughter,” he said of Dimudhu Ranasinghe, 35. “They moved here from Sri Lanka about 20 years ago. He would do anything for them.”
“The family can’t control their emotions right now,” Dananjaya added. “It’s so sad.”
The tragedy comes on the same day The Post reported a 15.5 percent spike in pedestrian deaths across the five boroughs this year.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly rushed to the scene as Ranasinghe’s body still lay partially under the vacuum truck, covered in a white sheet.
“It underscores how dangerous the job can be,” Kelly told reporters.
“He was in a roadway doing his job and he was struck and killed. So the investigation is ongoing.”
The vacuum-truck driver, Ramesh Khan, 25, of Jamaica, Queens, passed a breath test at the scene and had not been charged in the accident as of Saturday night.
“It was a freak accident,” Trinidad said. “The guy didn’t see him. He happened to be directly in front of the truck when the truck decided to take off.”
Additional reporting by Natasha Velez, Matt McNulty and Erin Calabrese