A Brooklyn woman was crushed to death by an out-of-control pickup truck last night just seconds after she left a Brooklyn Heights cafe with a bag of cookies, cops and witnesses said.
Emmy-award winning TV writer Martha Atwater, 48, had just bought five horseshoe-shaped cookies and exited Bagel Cafe when the driver of a black Honda Ridgeline jumped the curb and pinned her against the Clinton Street building at about 5:40 p.m., cops said.
“She just came in to buy cookies. She looked happy, she was smiling,” said the cafe manager, Alauddin Shipun.
“She walked out. I heard a big bang and she was gone. Someone was trying to lift her head up and asking her, ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’ ”
The 53-year-old driver may have lost consciousness because of diabetes, a police source said.
He remained at the scene and has not been charged.
Atwater was pronounced dead at Long Island College Hospital.
Her husband, Thomas Wallack, identified her there, a police source said.
Atwater graduated from Princeton University and won an Emmy in 2009 for her writing on “WordWorld,” a PBS kid’s show.
She was also nominated for an Emmy three years in a row for her work as a producer on “Clifford the Big Red Dog.”
A tearful Wallack came home late last night but was too distraught to speak.
Atwater was also on the board of the Brooklyn Heights Association.
“She was very active in the community,” said a neighbor near Atwater’s Remsen Street home.