A freak accident led to a 59-year-old Bronx woman being killed after she was impaled on a fence.
The woman was struck by a Lexus SUV at about 6:30 p.m. Friday. As the vehicle kept going, the force of the impact pushed her into the fence, which impaled her, according to the New York Post.
In a follow-up story, the Post identified the woman as Paulina Nrecaj, a stay-at-home mother who had three children and one grandchild. She was walking down the street to get a pizza when she was struck, according to the Post, citing family members it did not name.
She was taken to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, but died there, the Post reported.
Paulina Nrecaj, a 59-year-old mom of three and grandmother of one, has passed away.
The @nypost calls this a freak accident, but these kinds of deaths are all but expected on @NYC_DOT‘s unsafe streets.https://t.co/FeFdPk6wIP pic.twitter.com/dMXaKNUzcl
— NYC Bike Lanes (@NYCBikeLanes) September 10, 2022
“She was a good, sweet woman. She was a very good sweet woman. She didn’t deserve this. She was four steps away from her home,” Diana Nrecaj, 32, the victim’s daughter, told the Post.
Diana Nrecaj said her father heard a thump and “came downstairs and there was a gentleman in the building holding my mother until EMS came and arrived.”
Frane Nrecaj, 71, told the Post he knew his wife was unlikely to survive.
Do you worry about freak accidents like this happening to you?
“She was passed out. She lost a lot of blood coming from her mouth, a lot of blood coming from her nose,” Nrecaj said.
“To me she was a great person. She raised my kids. She was perfect. The kids were happy in their life. She was happy,” he said.
Sall Arobye, 32, who lives across the street, told the Post he tried to comfort the victim after getting her off the fence.
“She said ‘Do you think I made it?’ I was like ‘Yeah, you can make it. Stay strong,’” he recalled, adding that she thanked him.
“It’s horrible. It’s horrible,” he said. “I feel like I lied to her. She didn’t make it. It broke my heart.”
Jada Bellamy, 35, a nurse who was walking past the scene, said she helped the victim and Arobye.
“I was holding the lady’s hand,” Bellamy told the Post.
“She had a big, big gash on her left elbow and blood was coming from [her stomach]. I knew she had internal bleeding instantly so I was like ‘Don’t move her.’”
The driver was a 45-year-old man who swerved to avoid a van that had stopped in an intersection, according to the Post.
The driver was not arrested, according to WNBC-TV.
