A 2-year-old Queens girl, fresh from a fun-filled day at a local pumpkin patch, was crushed to death under the wheels of her family’s SUV in a freak accident, police and the girl’s heartbroken family said Monday.
Little Leilani Rosales wandered away from her mom’s side for just an instant while the mother’s boyfriend was pulling away from the curb outside the family’s home on 216th St. near 38th Ave. in Bayside shortly after 10 p.m. Sunday.
“She literally just came from pumpkin patch picking,” the girl’s grandfather, Sam Castellano, 47, told the Daily News. “So that was her day. Spent it with her mom. She had face-painting that day and picked out a pumpkin. She was just coming home.”
The toddler wandered in front of the 2021 Nissan Rogue and was run over when the boyfriend, 23, began to leave, cops said. The girl suffered severe head injuries.
The panic-stricken mother, also 23, and her boyfriend raced Leilani nearly 4 miles to Flushing Hospital, but she couldn’t be saved.
The driver has not been charged according to a police source who described the incident as a “horrible accident.”
The grandfather had the sad duty of watching surveillance video of the accident.
“She walked in front of the car,” Castellano said. “She’s 2 feet. You can’t see her. Her mother literally just had her hand, let go of it to grab packages, and she walked around the car.”
Castellano said the girl’s mother is struggling with the shocking loss. Little Leilani’s father is overseas in the military, he said. Her mother had been in the military, too, before returning to New York for school and work.
“She’s coping,” he said. “It’s a lot. We’re just trying to deal with it right now.”
The grandfather cried as he described the little girl and the smile that warmed his heart.
“She had a lot of personality, a lot of love,” Castellano said. “Very sweet, mischievous. But she’d win you over with that smile.”
He said Leilani bonded with his two younger daughters, who were the girl’s aunts.
“My other daughters are really attached to her,” he said. “They adore her.”
Castellano said he and his wife would watch the toddler while her mother was at work or school. Leilani was the mother’s only child.
The tragedy left neighbors in the close-knit community badly shaken. One resident said she saw police cars Sunday night — and heard the mother’s cries.
“It was wailing,” the neighbor said. “That’s not something you can shake very easily, when you hear that kind of crying. I didn’t want to believe that something happened to the baby.”
“They’re nice, good, people,” the neighbor added. “Beautiful little girl, happy little kid. I can’t even imagine. I just feel so bad for the mom.”
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