Weeping mom of 10-year-old mowed down outside Queens car wash collapses, cries out for her daughter
The devastated mother of 10-year-old girl killed by a runaway SUV screamed in agony and collapsed to the ground outside the family’s Queens home Thursday before making a heart-rending visit to the accident scene.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” heartbroken mother Priscilla Afokoba wailed hysterically after arriving at the Queens house with relatives. “My baby is dead, my baby is dead. They took my baby away!”
Little Davina Afokoba, carrying her bookbag while walking home from school, was pinned beneath the speeding vehicle Wednesday afternoon and then buried in the rubble after the SUV slammed into a shuttered Far Rockaway car wash, eyewitnesses told reporters.
A police source told reporters the driver possibly hit her gas pedal rather than the brake before the fatal crash witnessed by the young victim’s teenage brother as the investigation continued.
A yellow sticker on the SUV’s back bumper read “New driver please be patient.”
Her mother ran screaming down the block after arriving outside the family home Thursday, with relatives grabbing the distraught woman to bring her inside. The mom emerged a short time later, clutching her daughter’s frilly blue and white dress as she walked to the accident scene about two blocks away.
“Davina please! Davina please!” she howled in anguish after again falling to the ground, with family members helping the mom to her feet — just two months before her child’s birthday.
“This is her best dress, her last birthday dress,” the mother said. “She gets up every (Sunday) morning and says, ‘Mommy, we go to church. I want to wear my best dress. She wanted to wear it on Sunday. I told her to wear another one, she’ll wear it another day.”
The victim’s aunt Tina Ajoma said it was unclear if the girl’s father, who lives in Nigeria, had received word of the horrific wreck.
“One thing I know is how much she loved her mom,” the aunt said Thursday. “She was a beautiful girl, very lively, loved to play. She loves to cook. Every time I came over, she cooked for me. The last time I came over, she made shrimp and spaghetti.”
Ajoma said Davina’s two siblings were struggling with their sister’s shocking death. “I don’t know if they’ll be able to take it.”
The 35-year-old driver was about to make a left turn after leaving the Shop Fair Supermarket when the SUV suddenly accelerated as pedestrians scrambled for their lives, with the vehicle clipping a woman before slamming into the little girl, according to an eyewitness.
“The little girl had no time to do nothing,” said supermarket worker Legend Jones, 43. “She didn’t have a chance. We tried to pull her out of there. I was holding her hand.”