WOODSIDE — An 8-year-old boy walking with his sister to school on the last day before the winter break was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer driver with a history of reckless driving Friday morning, witnesses and officials said.
Noshat Nahian, a third-grader at P.S. 152 at 33-52 62nd Street, was crossing the six lanes of Northern Boulevard at 61st Street with his sister when a southbound truck struck him with its rear tires as it turned left onto the boulevard about 8 a.m., the NYPD said.
He was clutching a red gift bag with a present for his teacher, his distraught father MD Osma Miah said.
Nahian was taken to Elmhurst Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the NYPD. His mother rushed to the hospital, where she was able to be with the boy when he died, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education said.
The boy's grief-stricken father said that the family came to Queens from Bangaldesh to visit family a few months ago, but decided to stay because Nahian fell in love with the neighborhood.
"If we left that moment maybe he wouldn't have had died," his uncle Azizul Chowdhury translated his father saying. Both men were in tears.
"My son, my only son," the father wailed. He told reporters that he had been saving up to buy a laptop for the boy.
A neighbor of the family, Asana Arzu, 31, said she heard his sister scream and saw him lying in the roadway.
"I just saw the truck turn and the sister screamed," Arzu said. "His face was bloody and sallow. His limbs looked broken."
The driver of the truck, Mauricio Osorio-Palominos, 51, of Newark, remained on the scene and was charged with driving on a suspended license and having unsafe tires on the vehicle, police said. New York authorities did not know why his license was suspended.
Osorio-Palominos is currently a licensed driver in good standing in New Jersey, but has had 17 violations on his Class A commercial license going back to 1985, according to NJ Motor Vehicle Commission records. His license has been suspended and reinstated three times before, and has been hit with violations ranging from failure to comply with police instruction, ignoring traffic signals, seat belt violations and speeding, MVC records show.
On May 1, 2012, he was cited for dangerous driving after an accident, according to the MVC.
Gamosse Transportation, which appears to have only one truck and is owned by Osorio-Palominos, has a clean safety record according to a federal transportation database. He appears to be the only employee.
The NYPD would not say why his license had been suspended.
A crisis team was headed to the elementary school, which has more than 1,300 students in pre-kindergarten to sixth grade, to offer counseling to students and staff, the DOE spokeswoman said. The accident happened on the last day before the holiday vacation.
In February, 6-year-old Amar Diarrassouba was hit and killed by a tractor-trailer about a block from his East Harlem elementary school.
with reporting from Max Willens and Janon Fisher.
