The spectacular crash left the two and a half-ton Volkswagen upside down and in pieces on the sidewalk on /*Queens Plaza*/ South at Crescent Street in /*Long Island City*/.
The sidewalk was strewn with engine parts and covered in blood after the driver apparently lost control on the 2007 /*Volkswagen*/ and plowed headlong into a beauty parlor.
The impact, captured on surveillance video, shows the storefront is blown apart as the car bounces off the steel window gates and flips over.
It happened just after four in the morning. The beauty parlor was empty.
The thirty-five year-old driver and the thirty-one-year old woman with him survived the crash, but a sixty-eight year-old pedestrian was killed instantly.
/*Tony Buscemi*/, a veteran /*New York City*/ cab driver, had just left the 7 train and was walking to work when the out of control vehicle struck him.
The accident happened just two blocks from his yellow cab, where he sat behind the wheel twelve hours a day, six days a week for the last twenty-five years.
His bosses and fellow drivers are absolutely stunned by the randomness of his sudden death.
It happened at the end of the lower roadway off-ramp from the 59th street bridge, where a construction project forces drivers to shift lanes. What caused the driver to lose control was not immediately clear.
Many people told us speeding drivers are often unprepared to shift lanes.
The driver of the car and his passengers remained in the hospital in stable condition. Their names had not been released.
