Tuesday night's awful tragedy
, when a Nassau County commuter bus crashed into a Hempstead house and left six-year-old boy inside the home dead, is haunting the victim's brother. Josue Molina, 7, said, "I saw the bus coming toward my house. My brother was kind of walking by in his pajamas... The bus kind of fell on my brother ... he fell down and got squished."
Little David Granados was pinned by the Nassau Inter County Express bus, after its driver swerved on Fulton Avenue to avoid an apparently jaywalking pedestrian. The driver made a hard right, into the multi-family house and the front bedroom the two boys shared. Newsday reports that Jose was yelling, "Papi! Papi! Mommy! My brother!" and that his stepfather, Santos Herrera, 41, tried to save them: "Herrera, unable to open the bedroom door, climbed through the window but could rescue only Josue."
Josue says he and his brother had been awake when the bus struck the house at around 9:15 p.m., "I was awake when the bus came. It was out of control." He tried to dig through the debris to find his brother, "I was pulling on the rocks -- pulling and pulling -- but I couldn't find him. I wished nobody invented the bus, so he would still be alive."
Neighbors tried to get David out as well, but only firefighters were able to remove the child, who was pronounced dead at the hospital. Police say the crash was caused by the jaywalking pedestrian, Manuel Lopez-Rivera, 35, who was still hit by the bus and suffered broken bones.
Nassau County police also say the driver was not speeding or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. WCBS 2 reports that NICE has impounded the bus.
Josue said, “I’m going to miss him a lot, but you know he’s going to be in here. I didn’t want him to die. I wanted him to stay with me. He’s in the sky right now, he’s just watching me. He’s going to be in my dreams and everywhere."
