Diwali cast a pall of gloom on the lives of Daljit Kaur and Karan Deep Raju as the couple’s 8-month-old son on a stroller with his mother on a Queens street was killed Oct 28 after being struck by van.
News reports quoting police said that the baby, Navraj Raju, was knocked out of the stroller as the van was backing out of a narrow driveway on Astoria Boulevard near 93rd Street in East Elmhurst around 10 in the morning. The baby’s mother, 35-year-old Daljit Kaur, who was pushing the stroller, had left a grocery next door with a dozen eggs. She had momentarily stopped and bet down to adjust the baby’s blanket when the stroller was suddenly hit by the van that was rolling back towards the stroller. Driver Armando Rodriguez, 44, was taken into custody and was charged with driving without a license.
“He probably didn’t know he hit the carriage. He continues to run over the little baby, he ran over it,” the witness told 1010 WINS.
EMS rushed Raju to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he died. His mother was not injured.
CBS2 said quoting neighbors that the narrow driveway has limited sightlines especially when drivers are in reverse. “The backing out, the backing out. You tell them to be careful, you look out the side. Like they say, the mother was bending down tending to the baby, so she didn’t see him backing out,” Carlos Lopez was quoted as saying.
The New York Post said the boy’s father, a long haul trucker rushed back to New York from Pennsylvania to be with his wife. They have another son, a 3-year-old who lives with his grandparents in India. Reports quoted an aunt of the boy as saying that the parents had left the elder one in India with his grandparents recently so Kaur could take better care of the baby.
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