Erasmos Huerta Gonzalez, 38, was lying on the interior United Nations Avenue South path in Flushing Meadows Corona Park at about 4:40 p.m. on Aug. 23 when an NYPD cruiser rolled over him. Witnesses said the officer driving was not watching the road and was conversing with a passenger when the front wheels passed over Gonzalez. Bystanders yelled and waved to stop the car, and onlookers heard a crunch. A senior supervising officer on the lawn did not warn colleagues. Paramedics took roughly 20 minutes to extract Gonzalez; he later died at New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital. The family reports receiving little information from the NYPD.
"Both the driver and passenger cops were striking a conversation," one witness, who asked to remain anonymous, told Streetsblog. "They were looking at each other instead [of the road]."
"We had to yell and wave at the cops to stop the car," the bystander told Streetsblog. "You could hear the crunch of what we assumed to be bones. Yeah, it was awful."
"She never made any attempt to stop the car or warn [the police officer] that there was someone on the road," the witness said.
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