The 40-year-old Queens man arrested nearly three weeks after the hit-and-run crash that killed a 5-year-old boy as he tried to cross a street with his father and siblings earlier this month faces up to seven years in prison if convicted, authorities said Friday.
Xavier Carchipull, of Astoria, was arraigned late Thursday and is accused of leaving a deadly accident scene and driving without a license, among other vehicle-related offenses, in the Sept. 1 crash that killed little Jonathan Martinez right by the street where he lived.
The boy and his family were trying to cross 100th Street in their East Elmhurst neighborhood around 5:30 p.m. that day when cops say a Dodge Ram pickup driver going north on McIntosh Street, where the boy resided, hit him as it turned.
Martinez suffered severe head trauma and was pronounced dead at a hospital. His parents were overwhelmed by grief.
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"I just wanted the driver to stop and not run my boy over. Just stop," father Richard Martinez said in Spanish at the time, adding he tried to grab all the children in the area and pull them back. He said he tried to grab all the kids and pull them back. But he couldn't get them all to safety.
"The driver kept on going and crushed my boy with both tires, and he started to bleed profusely," Richard Martinez said.
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Richard Martinez had been walking with Jonathan, a friend and the boy's two siblings at the time of the accident. They had just left Helen Marshall Playground.
Footage from a neighbor's security camera captured the horror. The video shows three figures — the dad walking hand-in-hand with his two young boys — crossing the street in the middle of the block.
The truck then makes a turn, appearing to hit and drag the 5-year-old boy for several feet. The video shows the father trying to flag the driver down, but police say the driver did not stop. Officers also said the driver didn't appear to be speeding or turning illegally at the time of the crash.
Attorney information for Carchipull wasn't immediately available. He's back in court next week.
