So it’s the city’s fault little Ariel Russo was killed?!
The lawyer for an unlicensed teen driver who struck and killed a 4-year-old girl on the Upper West Side — while fleeing cops in his parents’ SUV — tried to blame the deadly crash on a pothole Wednesday in Manhattan court.
“You can see a whole series of holes,” said Franklin Reyes’ attorney Martin Schmukler. “If the vehicle went over a pothole it would explain how it [the car] went out of control.”
Reyes, 17, is accused of plowing into little Ariel Russo and her grandmother Katia Gutierrez, 58, as they walked to her preschool on the morning of June 4.
Ariel’s parents’ Sofia and Alan Russo, who appear at every court date, were outraged by the claim. “I’m frustrated that he’s trying to blame a pothole saying that because there was a pothole he hit my mom and my daughter,” she said as her eyes welled with tears. “He hit them because he was fleeing police.”
She added tearfully, ”As a mother who is grieving my daughter, it’s been five months now, it’s been so hard. I just have this overwhelming desire to hug her.”
Cops tried to pull over Reyes as he took a joyride in his parents’ Nissan when he hit the gas. Police were pursuing the panicked teen when he jumped a curb at West 97th Street and Amsterdam Avenue — tragically killing Russo and badly injuring Gutierrez, who remains in a wheelchair.
Schmukler asked Justice Gregory Carro for a delay in the trial until he obtains a street repair report from the city during a brief appearance in Manhattan Supreme Court. He said he’d inspected the site of the accident and noticed the recently filled holes.
Prosecutors are playing hardball and previously recommended the maximum sentence of 5- to 15-years if Reyes cops to manslaughter.
Schmukler has rejected the offer as too severe. “I think that it’s cold-blooded grandstanding,” he said. “I’m not going along with putting a teenager in jail and that’s it.”
The troubled teen is also charged with unlawfully fleeing a police officer, leaving the scene of an incident and unlicensed driving. He’s out on $25,000 bail.