A hit-and-run driver was finally nabbed five years after he allegedly killed a Good Samaritan and another motorist in a chain-reaction crash on a Bronx expressway, cops said.
Anyelo Velez Rodriguez, 33, was arrested Tuesday and slapped with manslaughter charges for allegedly slamming his BMW into a Cross Bronx Expressway pileup that killed pedestrian Jaquan Cesar and motorist Richard Lue on Feb. 11, 2019 at around 1:15 a.m., the NYPD said.
Cesar, 28, was on his way to see his then-1-year-old son Yasir and girlfriend when he witnessed a 2015 Mercedes Benz striking a 2012 GMC from behind on the westbound Cross Bronx near Webster Avenue, authorities said.
Cesar stepped out of the vehicle to help but moments later Velez Rodriguez hit the Mercedes from behind – flinging Cesar, over the barrier and into the eastbound lanes, where he was hit by another hit-and-run driver, police said.
Cesar worked at a clinic in Flushing as a dialysis technician for those suffering from end-stage renal disease, his aunt Maggue Jean-Francois told The Post after the tragedy.
“It’s hard to process that he died the way he did, but he died helping someone and that’s what he did every day when he went to work,” said Cesar’s aunt, who raised him and his two younger brothers, after his mother died from Graves’ disease when she was 28.
“In dialysis we deal with blood every day, and we know how to stop bleeding,” Jean-Francois added. “I know that’s what he thought he was gonna do — to go in and help.”
Velez Rodriguez sped off after striking the Samaritan, then rear-ended a 2018 Honda with 22-year-old Richard Lue behind the wheel, authorities said.
He then struck a tractor-trailer that also fled the scene, police said.
Cesar was pronounced dead at the scene, and 22-year-old Lue was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he too succumbed to his injuries, according to cops.
The Mercedes driver, a 24-year-old woman who was not arrested, suffered a minor arm injury.
Velez Rodriguez, of the Morris Heights section of the Bronx, was also charged with criminally negligent homicide, authorities said. His arraignment was pending Wednesday.