Grieving relative of mom, son killed in NYC July 4th crash tells suspected drunk driver ‘own up to what you did’
A grieving man whose mother and brother were among the three July Fourth partygoers killed in a horrific Lower East Side crash wants the suspected drunken driver to fess up.
“Own up to what you did,” said Diamond Pinkney, 29, to self-proclaimed “addict” Daniel Christopher Hyden, who is accused of drunkenly plowing down 11 people celebrating Independence Day at Corlears Hook Park Thursday night.
“You took something very important to me, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to come back from (this),” Pinkney told The Post in an interview Friday.
The devastating crash unfolded a block away from the Water Street home Pinkney shared with his mother Lucille Pinkney, 59, and brother Herman Pinkney, 38.
Both Lucille and Herman were killed, along with East Harlem resident Ana Morel, 43, when police said Hyden, 44, barreled a 5,000-pound Ford F-150 through the Water Street and Jackson Street intersection, over the sidewalk and into the park.
Diamond Pinkney was home when the crash unfolded.
“We heard the loud bang,” he said. “We thought it was a firework. But it wasn’t.”
The startling noise gave way to the sound of a new horror: friends yelling the names of Pinkney’s mom and brother.
“They were yelling their names. Then yelling my name,” he said.
“My family was very well known here. Everybody knows us.”
Pinkney’s brother and mother suffered severe body trauma in the crash and were declared dead at Bellevue Hospital, police sources said.
The unidentified woman, who suffered severe head trauma, likewise was declared dead at the hospital.
Eight other pedestrians were injured in the crash, including an 11-year-old boy, police and sources said.
Shock rippled through the tight-knit Lower East Side community near the park in the aftermath of the crash – with neighbors standing around the crime scene tape in utter disbelief.
One neighbor — Rafael Irizarry, 59 — came on a scooter, and just stood in the rain across from the scene for a while in silence.
He teared up thinking of Herman Pinkney’s devotion to his family.
“You know when someone has a good heart and that was him,” he said. “Always with a smile, always with his family. He was family oriented and never did anything wrong.”
Irizarry said the very community members shattered by the crash also rose up to help catch the suspected drunken driver — an account confirmed by police sources.
“He got out of the car and tried to run,” he said. “There was no cops there yet. But they caught him.”
Diamond Pinkney remembered his brother as a “class clown kind of guy” who could bring out smiles.
He called his mother the “definition of hard work,” whom he had hoped would take a break that night from the Fourth of July party.
“My mom been going out a lot lately and I just wanted her to relax and enjoy her day off at home,” he said.
Krystal Jimenez, Diamond’s girlfriend, said karma will come for the suspected drunken driver.
“I have no remorse for you,” she said. “I forgive you. But other than that — you’re getting what’s coming to you. I hope you rot in jail.”
— Additional reporting by Marie Pohl and Joe Marino
