A homeless good Samaritan who lay dying on a Queens sidewalk as two dozen coldhearted pedestrians strolled by wouldn’t have acted so callously, his grieving family said yesterday.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” said Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax’s cousin, Edwin Tacam. “Hugo wouldn’t have done that.”
Tale-Yax, 32, was repeatedly stabbed in the chest at 5:40 a.m. last Sunday while rescuing a woman from a knife-wielding thug on 144th Street near 88th Road in Jamaica, cops said.
A surveillance camera later caught 25 passers-by walking past him — including one who stopped to snap a photo of the dying man on his cellphone.
Firefighters did not receive a 911 call until 7:23 a.m.
The native of Guatemala had eked out a living doing odd jobs but was out of work and had recently lost his home.
“He lost his life trying to help someone else. That’s brave,” Tacam said. “He was a hero.”
Police said they still had no suspects.