An intoxicated driver fatally struck a mother of four who was stranded on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The force of the chain-reaction collision sent the victim flying over the guardrail and onto Meeker Avenue below, according to authorities and family members. The victim and eight of her family members were driving home in two separate cars on the BQE. They were returning from a family wedding when her sister-in-law, driving a 2005 Chevy, got a flat tire.

The victim, who was in her nephew’s 1997 Toyota Rav4 with two of her young children, pulled over onto the shoulder near Meeker Avenue near her sister-in-law. She was standing on the highway when she was struck by a 2011 BMW. The force of the impact caused a chain reaction, hitting the woman and sending her over the guardrail and onto Meeker Avenue. Eight of her family members watched in horror.  

The driver of the BMW was a 43-year-old man who family members say was intoxicated. They also reported that he tried to flee the scene on foot but was held by the victim’s nephew and his cousin until police arrived. “He smelled of liquor all over,” the victim’s nephew said, according to New York Post. “He said he wasn’t driving, but he was the only person in the car.” Family members say the driver was speeding and going an estimated 100 mph or more.

The woman, a mother of four from Guinea who used to work with special-needs children, was pronounced dead at Elmhurst Hospital.

Her husband of 27 years told New York Post, “My wife left me to go to a wedding, and she didn’t come back. She died. Somebody drove into them,” 

New York Post interviewed a woman who lives on Meeker Avenue near where the victim fell. “I heard someone screaming at the top of their lungs, and I looked outside my window, and I saw her body lying on the street.” she said.

“She had a head injury, definitely — lots of blood by her head,” said the woman. “It was horrible. It was upsetting.”

The woman’s screams also awakened a retired police officer who said, “When I opened up the window, I heard a woman screaming her bloody mind out,” he told New York Post. “I saw [people] all looking down from the highway, and there was a woman over there…She was sprawled out. There was just blood running down the street.” He says he remembers someone shouting, “That’s my mother!”