Freak Accident Critically Injures 4-Year-Old Boy

A Bronx preschooler was fighting for his life last night after a pole knocked down in a traffic accident fell on him while he and his mother waited at a crosswalk en route to day care.

Four-year-old Joshua Delarosa was in critical condition at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia following the accident Monday.

Joshua and his mom were waiting at an intersection on the corner of Broadway and W. 230th St. when a livery cab slammed into a pedestrian crossing sign, which toppled onto the boy, witnesses and police said.

The cab driver said a city truck had cut him off, forcing him to swerve. The truck driver blamed the cabbie. Both drivers stayed at the scene, and police said neither was charged -- a fact that angers the boy's distraught relatives as they pray solemnly for his survival.

"How are you going to stand at the corner with a baby and get hit? And it's nobody's fault," Joshua's baby-sitter, Joanne Martinez, told the Daily News. "We are praying to God that he makes it."

The boy's mother, Romula Fernandez, was taken to the hospital with minor injuries and is expected to be OK.