A stolen minivan careened onto a sidewalk in Brooklyn Wednesday, killing a 12-year-old girl and critically injuring her mom and little sister as they waited for a bus.
All three were pinned under the Dodge Caravan as the thief got out, took one look at the carnage he had caused and ran away, according to cops.
“Help my children! Help my children!” cried the badly injured mom, Marsha Landias, 38, as passers-by valiantly lifted the front of the vehicle high enough to prop it atop a nearby fire hydrant and free the family.
But the single mom’s eldest girl, Joey Sellers, was already dying.
“It was horrible,” Lex Gonder, 38, said of seeing the mangled bodies of the mom and girls. “I want to forget what I saw.”
The horrific crash happened just before 5 p.m. at Flatlands Avenue near East 46th Street in Mill Basin — just a block and a half from the family’s home.
The minivan had just sped onto Flatlands Avenue near Schenectady Avenue when it made a sudden, hard right, and slammed into the mom and her daughters, witnesses said.
The driver, described as a white man in his mid-30s, fled through several back yards with several good Samaritans in pursuit — all leaping fences along the way.
“He had to be on drugs or running from the police to just leave like that” after seeing the badly injured family, said an outraged neighbor, C.J. Mitchell, 35, a Verizon technician who witnessed the crash through his window and ran out to help.
Another neighbor, photographer Yves Guejuste, 49, said, “I saw him trying to get away and I chased him through two different yards, but he kept jumping fences. I could not keep up.”
Cops were tracking the runaway driver Wednesday night using K-9 dogs and cellphone records, police sources told The Post.
The craven driver was believed to have wound up a mile away, in an alleyway at Avenue J and East 43rd Street, where he hid for 10 minutes until a car came and picked him up, sources said cops believe.
Cops were investigating a cellphone call made from that location shortly after the crash.
All three victims were rushed to Kings County Hospital, where Landias works as a nurse,
Joey was pronounced dead on arrival there. Her little sister, Charlie, 9, and her mom were in critical condition Wednesday night.
The minivan had been reported stolen in Sheepshead Bay on June 27, cops said. It was not being pursued at the time of the crash, law-enforcement sources said.
Several witnesses estimated the driver’s speed at 45 to 50 mph.
“They were just waiting for the bus,” cried Jean Chery, 56, the mom’s brother.
“Last I heard, she’s on the operating table,” he said of his sister. “There’s nothing we can do. I’m just going to pray for them all.”