An elderly man out buying bread for his family was struck and killed by a van that flipped over at a Queens intersection after a freak accident involving a speeding ambulance and a commercial vehicle, police and witnesses said.
Rajib Mohammed, 75, was wiped out at 76th Street and Woodside Avenue, just two blocks from Elmhurst Hospital, where an FDNY ambulance carrying a patient was heading around 7 a.m. when it broadsided a van that flipped on its side and slid into the intersection's southeast corner.
Mohammed was pronounced dead at the hospital, where two EMS workers and the van driver were also treated for minor injuries. The ambulance patient was transported there in another ambulance.
"I heard the noise and ran over," said Mohammed Rahman, 50, a witness who knew the victim from the neighborhood. Rahman and several other men moved the van far enough to pull Mohammed out.
Rahman then picked the loaf of bread from the sidewalk and delivered it to Mohammed's family, along with the bad news.
"I woke up the family, and I gave them the bread," Rahman said.
Relatives said Mohammed was a retired auto mechanic who began taking early morning walks after his wife died five years ago.
"He always liked to go outside," said Mohammed's granddaughter, Zeenat Waheed, 14. "He liked to walk early in the morning."
A neighbor said Mohammed's family worried about him while he was out.
"He was walking and was hit by a car about a year ago," said Mani Behatia, 18, a neighbor. "But he was okay."
