A woman visiting the Big Apple from Germany with her husband was killed and nearly decapitated when a hit-and-run minivan driver plowed into the couple in Midtown Wednesday afternoon, police sources said.
The 50-year-old woman and 55-year-old man from Hamburg were struck by the driver of a green Toyota minivan – who had a vanity plate with the words “TIMES SQUARE” – around 2:40 p.m. at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 40th Street, according to cops and sources.
The woman was nearly decapitated on impact and pronounced dead, the sources said.
Her husband – who was celebrating his birthday with his wife in the Big Apple – suffered a fractured skull but was being treated at Bellevue Hospital in stable condition, sources said.
“The minivan sped away,” said a Nuts4Nuts food vendor at the corner who declined to share his name. “As he was reversing, [the woman] was under the van. The man was stuck under the tire. He got himself out.”
“Everyone was shocked. No one knew what to do. [The] guy fled the scene,” the vendor added. “Her face got run over. That’s what it looked like. It was shocking….It’s just crazy.”
The deadly crash happened when the 2001 Toyota Sienna driver – who was facing east on East 40th Street, blocking the intersection – backed up at a high rate of speed, according to the sources.
As the 40-year-old man backed up, he pinned the husband and wife between his car and a box truck stopped at the light, according to the sources.
Rosa Paredes, who was sitting inside an ice cream truck right next to the scene said she “heard the impact of the crash.”
“There was no screaming,” Paredes said in Spanish, through a translator. “The truck didn’t know there was a person under it because it was so high up. The minivan was at the crosswalk. It tried to go very fast to the right and then it backed up. I don’t think it knew it hit people.”
Houssaim Coly, who sells goods to tourists at the same corner, said he showed up after the crash, but his coworker told him it was all “a terrible accident.”
“The light was yellow and the van tried to catch the light,” Coly said. “When he was in the crosswalk he started to back up. The van was backing up and the truck was going forward and so the woman was in between the cars.”
Graphic videos obtained by The Post shows first responders tending to the motionless, bloodied woman on the ground in front of the truck, checking her pulse and ultimately realizing her head was nearly detached.
The driver fled in the minivan – which had a Mississippi tag – only to be picked up by one of the NYPD’s new Quality of Life teams an hour later at West 38th Street and Eighth Avenue, according to authorities and sources.
“I did not hit anybody,” the man told authorities when he was picked up, according to the sources.
Charges have not yet been filed against the motorist, who sources say was driving the minivan without a license.
Members of the NYPD’s Highway District Collision Investigation Squad are investigating, the sources said.
