A Vermont motorist has been arrested for fatally striking a Brooklyn mother of six after she shielded her teenage son from the oncoming pickup truck, NYPD officials said Friday.
Mitchell Maldonado, 33, is facing charges including leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death and failure to yield to a pedestrian for the March 3, 2023 Coney Island crash on Mermaid Ave. at W. 24th St. that killed 41-year-old Tamika Richards and seriously injured her 18-year-old son Rayquan Parker.
Mother and son were crossing Mermaid Ave. at about 8:50 p.m. when Maldonado’s red pickup came barreling towards them, cops said.
As the truck came closer, Richards jumped in front of her son and yelled for the driver to stop before taking the brunt of the deadly impact, Rayquan told friends and relatives.
“When she saw the truck coming, she positioned herself in front of him to protect him,” family friend Zemaya Williams, 21, told the Daily News after the crash. “So she ended up taking most of the impact.”
Maldonado, of Burlington, Vt., never stopped and disappeared into the night, cops said.
EMS rushed Richards to Coney Island Hospital but she could not be saved. Rayquan, a senior at John Dewey High School at the time, was taken to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn in stable condition, but suffered serious injuries to his pelvis that could affect his ability to walk.
After surgery, Rayquan was sent to a rehabilitation center to begin physical therapy so he could regain full movement, relatives said.
Detectives from the NYPD Collision Investigation Squad spent the next year tracking Maldonado’s truck and building a case against him.
A Brooklyn grand jury recently indicted him for the hit-and-run and a warrant for his arrest was issued.
Cops caught up with Maldonado after he was sentenced to 13 years in prison for a burglary conviction in Vermont, officials said. The burglary took place in 2021 and he was convicted for the break-in three months after the Brooklyn hit-and-run.
He was brought to New York on Wednesday and was ordered held without bail during a brief arraignment Wednesday evening, cops said.
A call to Maldonado’s attorney was not immediately returned Friday.
Rayquan told relatives that Maldonado had blown a red light before crashing into him and his mother. The two had run out to the store to pick up some drinks for a relative’s upcoming visit, family members said.
“He remembers it being a red light,” Williams recalled. ” He remembers hearing his mother telling the driver to stop and the driver just coming even faster. He remembers being under the truck — going under and waking up and them giving his mother CPR. He doesn’t even know that his mom is dead right now.”
Richards had three sons and three daughters, the oldest 20, and the youngest 8. She was overjoyed by the birth of her first grandchild about six months ago, a boy named Hakim fathered by her oldest son. All the kids and her grandchild live in her apartment.
“She’s ALWAYS looked out for everyone in her family, around the neighborhood, anyone that she came across, and she always had her children as her #1 PRIORITY,” her sister Shaquana Folks, wrote on a GoFundMe post seeking donations to keep the single mom’s family afloat.
More than 1,000 people signed a petition to name the intersection where she was killed to “Tamika Ashika Richards Way” as a secondary street name.
“Our sister was a FEARLESS spirit, a provider, a protector….but most of all she was a HERO,” Richards’ other sister Shavonna Folks wrote on the petition. “What other way more fitting to honor an act of heroism?”
