It was a bloody Sunday for pedestrians in the city, with three killed and a fourth critically injured by hit-and-run drivers in separate incidents, authorities said.
The predawn carnage began when José Contreras, 63, was fatally struck by a black SUV as he was leaving his sister’s 80th-birthday party at around 1:30 a.m., relatives said.
Contreras was sitting in his car with other family members waiting for his son to leave the venue near Webster Avenue and East 175th Street when, for some reason, he got out of the vehicle and was struck near the entrance to the Cross Bronx Expressway.
“I left my father in the car, and I figured that’s where he would be when I came back out. But when I came back out, he was in the middle of the street, laying in his own blood,” said his son Joseph Contreras, 27.
“I just think it’s cowardly to leave,’’ Joseph said of the driver. “I understand being scared, but it’s so much worse to go, for so many reasons. I just think they should turn themselves in. Save some face.”
About three hours later, Uber driver Besik Shengelia was struck by a car while retrieving something from the back seat of his vehicle parked near 111th Street and 109th Avenue in South Ozone Park, Queens, cops said. That driver, too, o fled the scene.
Shengelia, 48, a former commander of the Georgian navy during the country’s 2008 war with Russia, retired from the military and moved to New York with his family several years ago.
“It’s a nice family. They say hi and bye. Very good people,” said a neighbor.
Minutes later, a 41-year-old homeless man was mowed down by a gold sedan on Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street in Park Slope, leaving blood all over the street, cops said.
“[He] went flying across Fifth Avenue,” said a witness Maza Dolgan, 31.
“His head smashed into the sidewalk, and there was blood all over. He wasn’t moving.”
A 22-year-old woman was also clipped by a hit-and-run driver when she stepped in front of a minivan while trying to cross Guy Brewer Boulevard at 118th Road in South Jamaica at around 2:20 a.m. She was rushed to Jamaica Hospital, where she was listed in critical condition, police said.
Police were seeking the drivers in all four incidents.