A two-year-old boy was fatally struck by a van while crossing the street outside a park in Elmhurst, Queens on Saturday night around 7 p.m. Andrew Ramirez was reportedly following behind relatives and a group of children who dashed across 82nd Street, across from Moore Homestead Park, near Broadway. He was struck by a red van driven by Pablo Paredes, 39, a plumber on the way to a job. Witnesses say Ramirez and the other children were running across the street to get to a bag of cookies and other treats discarded by the Parks Department.
Moments earlier, Parks Department workers had reportedly cleared the small park of illegal food vendors and discarded all their food into garbage bags, depositing them across the street from the park. "The kids from the park started running to grab all the cookies and whatever they were selling from the garbage," Paredes told the Daily News after the accident. "I feel really sorry. I have three kids." Ramirez was with relatives when he was struck; one witness tells the Post, "The uncle and sister crossed the street, and the boy ran after them. When he crossed, the van was coming. It wasn't speeding."
"The driver was screaming, 'I need help!' He was, like, 'Oh, my God! Oh, my God!' " the boy's aunt tells the Post. Paredes was not charged. Ramirez, who would have turned 3 on the 27th of August, was pronounced dead at Elmhurst Hospital. He's the second minor killed in traffic over the weekend; a 13-year-old girl was also killed Saturday night after she helped six other children, including her younger sister, escape an out-of-control SUV that was being driven by a stabbing victim.
