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Elderly Man Loses Foot After Hit-And-Run Driver Slams Him Through Window
By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 26, 2013
Modified Feb 26, 2013
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By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 26, 2013
Modified Feb 26, 2013
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An 83-year-old man was seriously injured after a hit-and-run driver knocked him through a window of the Silver Towers Building in Kew Gardens around this morning. The incident occurred shortly before 9 a.m. Police and witnesses say the driver abruptly backed up onto the sidewalk of Queens Boulevard and hit the pedestrian, shattering the front window of a UPS store in the process. Bystanders tell CBS 2 the driver was trying to parallel park and "may have mistaken the gas pedal for the brake."
“This guy drove backwards,” witness Alex Gilbert tells DNAinfo. “It looks like he was parallel parking but it seemed to me like he confused the gas and the brake. [The car] knocked this parking meter over and he went right into the UPS store front." Another witness tells CBS 2 the victim was buried under bricks and broken glass. "He wasn’t screaming or anything, he just kept saying, ‘Help me, help me,’ " John Attanasio recalls. “He kept trying to move his legs so I told him not to move. The bone was completely shattered about an inch above the ankle. I could see the bone sticking out; I could see the foot hanging by the skin.”
Police say the driver initially fled the scene but was apprehended not far away. The NYPD press office has identified the subject as one William Gallagher, age 64; he's been charged with leaving the scene of an accident. His alleged victim is in stable condition, but it's unclear if his foot can be healed. Attanasio tells the Post, "The ambulance put his foot next to his leg on the stretcher, it was horrible.”
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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