TRAGIC SCENE: Police at the approach to the Williamsburg Bridge inspect the minivan that fatally struck Dashane Santana yesterday as the 12-year-old was crossing Delancy Street. (
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A 12-year-old girl who dreamed of being an actress and had just applied to Juilliard was struck by a car and killed yesterday as she crossed a busy Lower East Side street.
Dashane Santana, a sixth-grader at Castle Middle School, was on her way home from class when she was hit at Delancey and Clinton streets, near the Williamsburg Bridge, at around 2:40 p.m., cops said.
“Dashane had a lot of friends, everybody loved her,” her grief-stricken mom Shamika Benjamin, 31, told The Post last night.
“She was a loving little girl — that was my little girl.”
Benjamin said the horrific crash occurred as her daughter was headed to a doughnut shop with a group of friends for an after-school snack.
“She was crossing the street when she dropped her bookbag,” Benjamin said.
The child apparently turned around to pick up the fallen satchel when a 2006 Toyota Sienna minivan slammed into her, Benjamin said.
One of the friends who witnessed the horrific scene told relatives that the van driver plowed into Dashane, stopped, realized he’d hit something and then ran over her again.
The impact was so fierce, it was heard inside stores along Delancey Street.
“I saw the little girl lying in the street,” said Katherine Ramirez, 18, manager of the Sneak Jeans store on Delancey. “Her sneakers came off . . . they were in the middle of the street, broken.
“Her friends said they were crossing the street and the light was with them, and the car just came out of nowhere,” Ramirez said.
The 58-year-old van driver, who had been heading onto the bridge, remained at the scene and was not charged. Cops said it was an accident.
Dashane, who lived in the Jacob Riis II Houses nearby, was taken to New York Downtown Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, police said.
Last night, her grief-wracked mom described her daughter as an outgoing, talented child who played flute and piano and “loved singing, acting and dancing.”
The pre-teen was thrilled when she scored a spot as an extra in the Mark Wahlberg-Russell Crowe drama “Broken City,” which filmed on the Lower East Side last fall.
Dashane also had just applied to the famous Juilliard School for the performing arts, Benjamin said.
The grieving mom said she asked cops why the driver wouldn’t be charged and was told it was because he didn’t run a red light.
“I’m not OK with that,” she said.
The van driver seemed angry as he spoke just after the crash, according to a report.
“There were five kids in the road,” he told the Gothamist, speaking through a Chinese interpreter.
“They ran the red light.”