Eight people, four of them young girls from Long Island, were killed yesterday when their minivan — going the wrong way on a Westchester highway — slammed head-on into an SUV, rolled down an embankment and burst into flames.
The tragedy took place on the Taconic Parkway near Mount Pleasant, after a woman driving with five kids accidentally turned south into the northbound lanes while returning home from a camping trip.
“It’s mind-boggling. It’s crazy what happened,” said motorist Peter Dedvukaj, 29, of Yonkers, who pulled two children out of the burning vehicle.
When Chief Joe LaGrippo of the Hawthorne Fire Department arrived, there were six people on the ground on fire.
“I had five kids burning up, and I had to make a decision,” he said. “I worked on one kid, giving her CPR and realized she was dead. I moved to three more and realized they were dead. But me and my crew were able to save the fifth kid. It was a good feeling, because I thought I lost them all.”
The child who survived was Brian Schuler, 5, of West Babylon, LI, the minivan driver’s son.
He was in critical condition at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla with bleeding on the brain and a broken arm, his grandmother, Irene Schuler, 67, of Levittown, told The Post.
Tragic mom Diane Schuler, 36, who was driving a Ford Windstar, was returning from Monticello, where the family owns a trailer, neighbors said. In the van besides Brian were her daughter, Erin, who had just turned 2, and three nieces, 5, 7 and 9. Schuler and the four girls all died.
Neighbors said Schuler, who worked for Cablevision, had made the trip many times — but somehow took the wrong turn, State Police Investigator Joe Becerra said.
She was traveling in the left lane at an estimated 65 to 70 mph when she collided head-on with a Chevrolet Trailblazer carrying three men from Yonkers.
Both vehicles were sent flying, said Dedvukaj’s sister, Katrina.
“Only in the movies do you see something like that,” she said.
After hitting the SUV, the minivan struck another car, carrying a man and a woman.
The three men in the SUV also died. They were identified by Margaret Nicotina as her dad, Michael Bastardi, 81; her brother Guy Bastardi, 49; and a family friend, Don Longo. The three had been going to Yorktown Heights to “have dinner with relatives and do a little shopping,” she said, adding that the family was “just devastated.”
The elder Bastardi and Longo had worked in the auto-parts business until they retired. Guy was still working. Michael Bastardi, an Army vet, had three other kids and 10 grandchildren, Nicotina said. Her brother Guy was single.
The man and woman in the third vehicle suffered minor injuries.
Twelve hours earlier, five people were injured in another wrong-way accident on the same highway, 20 miles north of the minivan crash site. No one died in that incident.
Additional reporting by Joe Mollica and Ed Robinson