A mobbed-up hit-and-run truck driver wanted for fatally striking a Queens bicyclist while fleeing NYPD cops has been charged with murder after eight months, police said Monday.
Bikem Fiseku, an ex-con on federal probation with ties to the Bonnano crime family, is accused of killing 37-year-old Amanda Servedio in the Oct. 22 crash.
“We hope he gets what he deserves,” the victim’s father, Frank Servedio, 73, told the Daily News Monday. “We wanted him to be arrested and we want him to serve time and be punished for what he did.”
The crash raised anew concerns about the NYPD’s sometimes dangerous chasing of suspects.
“We were certainly upset that they didn’t stop the chase,” the victim’s father said of the NYPD. “It was probably not the place to be doing a high-speed chase, in the residential neighborhood, and we were very upset that that’s what actually happened.”
Police say Fiseku, 54, sped off from officers responding to a call about a burglary in progress at a home on Crescent St. near 37th Ave. in Long Island City.
The cops saw a Dodge Ram pick-up truck with tape over its rear license plate parked nearby. When they approached, Fiseku, with two passengers in the truck, sped off, striking two NYPD vehicles, authorities say.
Police chased the driver for nearly a mile, into Astoria, where he T-boned Amanda Servedio at 37th St. and 34th Ave.
The impact sent Amanda Servedio flying off her bike and she slammed into a parked BMW.
“She didn’t even scream,” witness Jake Kwok told the Daily News at the time. “She went airborne. She flew like 30 feet…It was a lot of force.”
Video shows an NYPD van in hot pursuit, its lights flashing.
After Amanda Servideo was hit, police stopped their van and rushed to her aid. Medics rushed her to Elmhurst Hospital but she could not be saved.
The victim’s mother was visiting her in Astoria at the time of the crash.
“She was actually staying at the apartment,” Frank Servedio said. “Amanda said she was going for a bike ride with her bike club and she’d be back later. And when it got very late, we started to get worried. (Amanda’s mother) got worried, called me. And next thing you know, the police are knocking on the door.”
“She was just a happy, fun, loving individual who just who lit up a room,” he said of his daughter. “She always had a smile on her face. She was always in a good mood, always making people around her happier.”
“She was my sports partner,” he added. “We would go to Yankee games together and we would go to sporting events. We were both big Ohio State football fans…. We would talk on the phone during games.”
The Ram was later found abandoned at Newton Road and 47th Ave.
Police a month later named Fiseku as a suspect, released his photo and asked the public’s help tracking him down.
Amanda Servedio grew up in Arkansas but her parents are originally from New York City and so the family often visited when Amanda was growing up.
“She just fell in love with New York,” her father said. “And when she came of age she said that she would like to go live in New York and work in New York and be a New Yorker. And with our blessing, she did — and she loved every minute of it. She took advantage of New York City like most people don’t. She did everything the city had to offer.”
Her activities included working as a comedy promoter.
“She would have some comedian friends that would put on shows and she would book the venue and sell the tickets and emcee the event,” her father explained.
“She was a very social person. She was loved by everyone who met her. She was loved by the people at her work, her recreational activities, all of her friends, the bike club that she was a member of. ”
Fiseku, has a record dating to the 1990s and has been linked to Staten Island’s New Springville Boys, a crew of mobsters involved in robberies and burglaries.
In 2001, Fiseku was sentenced in Brooklyn Federal Court to more than seven years in prison for a bank robbery, a home invasion robbery and a marijuana distribution conspiracy. That sentence ran concurrently with a 50-month sentence he got in 2000, also in Brooklyn Federal Court, for another racketeering case involving various bank burglaries.
Records show he was on supervised release in 2008 when he and a Bonanno associate, Lee D’Avanzo — the husband of Mob Wives star Drita D’Avanzo — and two other men were arrested for trying to break into the vault of a Staten Island bank by busting through the basement of another building.
Noah Goldberg
Noah Goldberg / New York Daily News Drita D’Avanzo leaving court on Aug. 7, 2020, after her husband, Lee D’Avanzo, was sentenced to more than five years in prison. (Noah Goldberg / New York Daily News)
He and D’Avanzo were sentenced to 2 ½ to 5 years in state prison and in 2009 he was charged with a violation of his supervised release.
He was charged Monday after being transported to the 114th Precinct stationhouse from a federal lockup.
The NYPD said its internal review of the police pursuit of Fiseku is not yet complete.
Earlier this year, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch put in place a new set of guidelines for police pursuits, limiting them to incidents involving the most serious felony crimes.
“I do know that they did change the policy on police chases and I think that Amanda’s death had a lot to do with that,” Frank Servedio said. “They knew that those police chases were extremely dangerous.”
Amanda’s death has prompted her parents to become involved in a New York City advocacy group, Families for Safe Streets.
“Her loss was devastating to many, many folks,” her father said.
Originally Published:
