‘I’m watching my daughter die’

A man accused of getting loaded and ramming his pick up truck into a group of Lower East Side residents celebrating July 4 last year faced heart- rending testimony from those  reeling from the carnage as his quadruple murder trial got underway in Manhattan on Monday.

Daniel Hyden, 44, sat silently as friends and loved ones of the four people killed after he allegedly blew a stop sign, mounted a curb, and plowed his Ford F-150 through a fence into Corlears Hook Park last summer took the stand against him in Manhattan Supreme Court.

A distraught Liliana Ruiz, 51, broke down in tears as she told the court about rushing to her 30-year-old daughter’s aid and watching the life drain from her eyes as she lay wedged beneath Hyden’s truck.

“I’m tapping her face,” Ruiz testified, struggling to speak as she described trying to keep her daughter awake, saying her eyes looked “like saucers” and her lips slowly turned purple.

“‘Emily, it’s going to be okay. … Don’t close your eyes,’” Ruiz said. “I just thought, I’m watching my daughter die right now.”

After medics arrived, the grieving mother said she went to gather belongings to bring to the hospital, with Emily Ruiz’s panicked little son suggesting they bring a first aid kit.

“He tells me, ‘I don’t want my mom to die. She’s a great person,’” Ruiz quoted her grandson through tears.

The elder Ruiz said she faced every mother’s worst nightmare when doctors declared her daughter brain dead at Bellevue Hospital.

“What choice did you make?” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos asked Ruiz.

“To let her go,” Luiz said, sounding inconsolable.

Killed in the crash along with Ruiz were Hernan Pinkney, 38, his mother, Lucille Pinkney, 59, and Ana Morel, 43. Seven others, including children, were injured, prosecutors say.

Hyden has pleaded not guilty to four counts of second-degree murder, aggravated vehicular homicide, and related counts and could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.

He’s accused of plowing into the park near the Vladeck Houses with a blood alcohol content more than double the legal limit less than an hour after he’d been escorted off nearby Pier 36 after crew aboard the Boss Lady NYC said he was too drunk to sail, as the Daily News previously reported.

In court Monday, the man’s lawyer, Theodore Herlich, posited that Hyden didn’t slam on the brakes because he’d injured his foot earlier in the evening, not because he was drunk.

In his opening statement, Bogdanos quoted from Hyden’s book, written after he’d supposedly battled his addictions and implausibly titled, “The Sober Addict: A Guide on How to Be Functional With the Dysfunctional Disease of Addiction.”

“‘A real danger to others, my bike and myself when I was on the road intoxicated,’” the prosecutor read from the book, saying Hyden had clearly been aware of the risks of driving while drunk and consciously did so anyway.

State Supreme Court Justice April Newbauer, presiding over the bench trial, also heard Monday from Hector Moreno, Hernan Pinkney’s childhood best friend, who was at the Independence Day celebration.

Moreno identified several of those killed joyfully laughing and dancing in cell phone footage taken at the barbecue hours before the incident. Testifiying he was still in severe pain after dislocating a herniated disk in the crash, Moreno said he didn’t see Hyden coming, but heard him revving his engine.

Moments after the slaughter, Moreno said, he rushed to the driver’s window, finding a disoriented-looking Hyden with his foot on the gas, shirtless and without a seat belt on and trying to move the shift gear — while several victims remained trapped under his vehicle.

“I just started hitting him as hard as I could,” Moreno testified.

Asked to identify the driver, Moreno stared down Hyden in court and pointed his finger straight at him, telling Newbauer he had no doubt.

The trial continues Tuesday.