Police say 20-year-old Ramanpreet Singh was operating a 2010 Ford Escape when he hit the toddler at the intersection of 28th Street and Queens Plaza South in Long Island City just after 10:40 a.m.
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The boy, Mason Castillo, was walking to the daycare facility where his mother, Patricia Castillo, works.
"I saw him in my mother's arms and an EMT trying to take him," she said. "My mom was just yelling out, 'I need help. My daughter works across the street. Please somebody help me.'...I didn't know how to hold him at the time. I didn't know what to do."
Mason was rushed to New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center with a fractured skull and a broken leg.
He underwent a second surgery Friday to mend broken pieces of his skull and will need extensive rehab. But family members are simply grateful he is alive.
"He's a baby, it's horrible," aunt Kate Castillo said. "He doesn't fully understand what happened. So how do you explain to a 2-year-old what happened to him?"
The family has set up a GoFundMe to help pay for medical bills.
Authorities say Singh fled the scene, and detectives linked his taxi to the crime.
He was arrested at his Queens home Friday morning.
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"It break my heart because my son is suffering here," Patricia Castillo said. "He's saying he just hit a lady with grocery bags. My son is not a grocery bag. It's a human being and he just took off...He has to pay for what he did because this is not fair for my son."
Singh is charged with leaving the scene of an accident with a serious injury, failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to use due care resulting in a serious injury.
He just received his TLC license on March 11. His father reportedly owns the taxi he was driving.
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