Enzo Farachio was waiting for a bus and believed to have been looking at his phone when a gray Lexus SUV fatally struck him in Midwood, New York. His family have released a photo of the sixth-grade
A ten-year-old Brooklyn boy crushed to death at a bus stop by an out-of-control SUV had just started going back and forth to school on his own this week his heartbroken parents have revealed.
The family released a picture of the sixth-grader dressed in a cap and gown.
Enzo Farachio was waiting for a bus and believed to have been looking at his phone when a gray Lexus SUV fatally struck him in Midwood, New York.
The driver Alexander Katchaloff, 59, allegedly suffered a medical episode which caused him to lose control of his car mount the curb and smash into the schoolboy. He was not immediately charged.
The youngster suffered severe trauma to his neck and back but was later pronounced dead at hospital after the incident at 2.40pm Tuesday on Ocean Avenue, PIX11 reported.
The vehicle continued to crash into the scaffolding of an eight-story building, injuring the Katchaloff and an eight-year-old girl inside the vehicle.
Both were taken to Kings County Hospital, where the man is expected to survive and the female relative suffered minor injuries.
The wreckage from a gray Lexus SUV, which crashed into Enzo and killed him on Ocean Avenue and Avenue L in Midwood, New York
The boy was waiting for a bus when the vehicle crashed into him and then into scaffolding
Ambulances and fire trucks could be seen at the accident site on Tuesday, the wreckage of the vehicle still stuck among metal poles.
‘I got a call and I went to the hospital and I saw my son was dead,’ the boy’s grieving dad, Angel Farachio, said Wednesday to the Daily News. ‘I’m heartbroken.’
Enzo’s parents told the News that they were were planning a trip to Six Flags for his birthday on September 30. Instead they are picking out a casket for the sixth grader’s funeral.
The youngster usually took a yellow school bus to school, but his parents had taught him how to travel on the city bus so he could have an option.
The male driver, Alexander Katchaloff, 59, was taken to hospital with an eight-year-old female relative who was also injured
The area in Midwood appeared to be a few feet away form the bus stop where Farachio would have been standing
‘In the morning, my other son takes him to the yellow bus which takes him to the school directly,’ Majao said. ‘Last week on Friday, he told me he got MetroCards and I told him, I want you to take the yellow bus because the yellow bus takes you right here to the house. But when he got out of school on Friday the yellow bus was gone already. So he said he was going to take the city bus. I asked him if he was sure and he said, “I know what I’m doing. I know what to do mom,” he said.
‘So we said okay,’ Majao said. ‘If you can’t catch the yellow bus, you can take that city bus to come home.’
‘I think he was texting his brother, I’m on my way, because that’s what I told him to do so his brother knows to open the door for him because he didn’t have a key,’ Majao said. ‘He did what he was supposed to do.’
Although police said it was not immediately clear if Katchaloff’s Lexus was speeding, Farachio and the boy’s mom, Mary Majao, said the driver should be held responsible.
Ave L and Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn NY where a car jumped the curb killing 10-year-old Enzo Farachio, as he waited for a bus
Some broken plastic is the only evidence that there was some kind of incident
The scene of the accident has been cleared up since Tuesday afternoon’s crash
Police are still investigating the case and will decide at a later date whether they will film criminal charges after it’s claimed the driver had a medical episode
‘I’ve read that he has a couple of summons for speeding,’ Majao said to the Daily News. ‘But I’ve also heard that he had some kind of seizure. But he must have been driving fast to kill someone and to make all that chaos. If you were driving 25 miles per hour, somebody could be alive today. But that’s not what happened.
‘Tomorrow or the day after we’re going to see a lawyer and we’re going to follow up because I don’t want this to happen to any other family. We need to have safe streets. This could have been prevented.’
Officers now are deciding whether to file criminal charges after it was claimed that the driver’s car left the road due to means out of his control.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez told the New York Daily News: ‘We’re investigating. We’re being told that it was a potential medical situation.
‘As you’re aware we’ve had two prior cases since I’ve been the D.A. where someone had a medical episode.
A police barrier has been erected to prevent the public from entering into the area of the crash
‘And we’re going to be looking into whether or not in fact that was the case, and whether or not the person should be behind the wheel.’
Construction worker Mohammed Hamoud, 31, who was on the eighth floor of a nearby building when the incident happened said he heard a ‘boom’ at the time of the crash.
He said he could not initially see what happened because scaffolding obstructed his view.
Hamoud told CBS News said: ‘We saw the one boy… on the floor. A lot of blood over there. A lot of blood in front of his nose and mouth.
‘You send your kids into school, they don’t come back it’s very, very sad.’
Another passerby Naida Sari said she heard ‘a very bad noise’ and then ran to her door where another woman outside confirmed a boy had died.
‘I’m shaking, my heart’s shaking, terrible,’ she said.