The blond Scottish beauty mowed down by a hit-and-run driver early Sunday was giving a visiting British pal a taste of Lower East Side nightlife before tragedy struck.
Gorgeous Julia Thomson, 24, suffered massive head injuries and died almost instantly after Tenzing Bhutia, driving his father’s Mercedes, crashed into her as she crossed the Bowery at East Fourth Street, authorities said.
A doorman at Bowery watering hole Phebes said Thomson was entertaining a British girlfriend who was visiting the city when the crash occurred in front of his bar.
“We tried to calm down her friend, but she was just really upset,” said the doorman, recalling how bar employees tried to comfort the traumatized pal and gave her water.
A barmaid at another nearby bar, the Blue Moon, said Thomson, who was unemployed but actively searching for a position in marketing, was a regular and always pleasant.
“She came here all the time,” the server said. “She was really nice, it’s so sad what’s happened.”
Bhutia, 21, was charged with the hit-and-run drunken-driving death of Thomson and was being held in lower Manhattan’s Tombs last night in lieu of $75,000 bail.
Bhutia, a finance student at Baruch College, had a blood alcohol content of .087 when he was arrested at mid-morning Sunday, some 4½ hours after the Lower East Side crash. The legal limit is .08.
The accident occurred at 4 a.m. just as Thomson walked toward her nearby apartment.
Bhutia has admitted he sped away from the scene despite knowing he’d hit something, according to the criminal complaint against him.
The crash was witnessed by several people, authorities said.
Bhutia was apprehended after parking the dented, bloody vehicle near his father’s Forest Hills home, where he also lives.
“He’s a good kid!” Bhutia’s sister, Kessang, 24, sobbed after her brother’s Manhattan Criminal Court arraignment yesterday.
“This was just a mistake,” she cried. “It was an accident.”
Thomson’s heartbroken relatives said she enjoyed New York City and the U.S. in general.
“She loved America. This has obviously been a huge shock, and we are still taking it in,” brother William Thomson told The Scotsman newspaper.
“She was a wonderful sister. She was the only daughter of the family and it used to be the four of us – her and her three brothers. Now she’s gone, and we will all miss her so much.”
Thomson’s distraught father, also named William, said he’s been in close contact with city cops, who assured him they’ve arrested his daughter’s killer.
“I still don’t have a daughter,” the grieving dad said.
Thomson’s brother summed it up: “This has just been a tragic accident.”