A group of good Samaritans made a valiant effort to rescue a Manhattan jeweler who was pinned underneath a livery cab on Monday — lifting the vehicle and flipping it on its side in order to get to the elderly victim.
But their efforts to save Carol Dauplaise, 77, were in vain, as her injuries were so severe that she was soon pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital Center.
Dauplaise was crossing Madison Avenue with a suitcase at East 36th Street when she was struck by the black Toyota Avalon driven by Buddhi Gurung at around 8:35 a.m., according to police.
The 49-year-old Tel-A-Car driver was turning left onto Madison from East 36th Street, and failed to yield to Dauplaise as she crossed from east to west, authorities said.
Witnesses watched in horror as Dauplaise wound up under the 2013 vehicle, and about 10 pedestrians ran to her aid.
“Her head was turning blue,” said Rony Damestoir, who was one of the people who helped raise the vehicle. “There was no other way we could remove the lady from underneath the car, so we lifted the car. I was surprised. I thought it [would be] heavier.”
Once the sedan was lifted off Dauplaise and turned on its side, she was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
While Gurung remained at the scene and cooperated with police, he was eventually slapped with charges of failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care, authorities said.
“When I turned on the green light, I didn’t see her,” he recalled. “I’m very upset.”
While Gurung had a clean TLC for-hire vehicle license from September 2013 to September 2014, he then failed to renew it, officials said. But he got a new TLC license on October 14, 2014.
Gurung’s TLC license has been suspended because of the Monday crash, pending the outcome of the investigation, officials said.
According to her Web site, Dauplaise has been in the jewelry business since 1979, when she started her own company with just one sales person and one design assistant.
The self-described “fashion jewelry guru” writes that Carol Dauplaise Ltd has successfully grown to a multimillion-dollar enterprise over the years and currently employs over 50 people in New York City.
Employees at Dauplaise’s store on West 37th Street declined to comment on her death.
Additional reporting by Daniel Prendergast