A 68-year-old grandfather was mowed down by a wrong-way moped driver as he crossed at a Queens intersection — just days before he was to bring his daughter home for Christmas, his family told The Post.
Trevor Lloyd Samuels, a former correction officer from the island of Jamaica, was walking in the crosswalk on 93rd Avenue shortly after 6:30 p.m. Friday when he was struck and killed by the two-wheeled menace, a spokesperson for the NYPD said Sunday.
The tragedy left his family devastated.
“When we heard a knock, we thought it was him coming home, I was like, ‘Why is he knocking? He has keys,’” the dead man’s oldest daughter, Kievette Samuels, 45, said Sunday. “When I opened the door, I saw the uniform, I was like, ‘Oh no’. That’s when panic mode set in.
“They said he was involved in an accident, and he died, and I’m like ‘He what?’” she said. “I was like, ‘No, you’re joking.’ I asked them like five times.”
Police said the driver of the moped, 26-year-old Yunio Buleje Rodriguez, also suffered minor injuries and remained at the scene until cops arrived.
Rodriguez was charged with aggravated unlicensed operation, with an investigation still underway.
Samuels, who moved to the Big Apple about 20 years ago, was scheduled to fly to Jamaica on Tuesday to bring his youngest daughter — who is 17 — back to Queens for the holidays, according to his family.
Now, Kievette Samuels, the oldest of five siblings, said she doesn’t believe her family can celebrate Christmas without the family’s beloved patriarch there for the festivities.
“I have the Christmas tree, it’s in the box,” she said. “I said to my daughter yesterday, I’m not going to even take it out of the box. I’m not feeling the spirit, I’m not seeing it. And his room is right in the living room where I would put the tree too.”
She said the tragedy has been hardest on her daughter, who was particularly close to Samuels.
“My daughter keeps thinking it’s him coming through the door,” she said. “He was active in his grandchildren’s lives. He came to their graduations, he played his part. He’s a ‘girl-dad,’ and it’s translated down to the grandchildren.”
She also noted that Rodriguez, the moped driver, is even younger than her oldest son.
“Basically he could’ve been my child,” she said. “So for me to have hate? No, no. I’m just mad that he did that. I don’t think that was his intention, but with that said, you were going the wrong way.”
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