How 2 men were mowed down in horrific New York crash

A tire shop worker and a dad of eight children were both killed standing next to a food truck in Queens, New York, Tuesday morning.

The horrific crash also took the life of the 84-year-old driver who barreled into them, police said.

Joaquin Venancio, 41, the manager of a nearby tire shop and one of the Astoria food truck customers, was hurled through the windshield of the elderly driver’s car upon impact, family members said.

Santiago Baires, 70, father of eight, was also struck and killed in the crash.

The driver was zipping north on 42nd St. when he blew through a stop sign at 19th Ave. about 8:40 a.m. and slammed into the back of the double-parked food truck and the two men next to it, startling surveillance video seen by the Daily News shows.

The force of the impact from the speeding silver 2010 Toyota Corolla lifted the food truck in the air and propelled it forward, the video shows.

“My truck is totaled, but I still have my life,” Giancarlo Caruso, the food truck’s owner told the Daily News after narrowly avoiding being struck himself. “I’m just grateful that something moved me out of the way.”

“The car must have been going 50, 60 miles an hour,” added Caruso, who sells coffee and pastries to workers at nearby warehouses and auto repair shops from the coffee cart built into the back of his pickup truck. “It was catastrophic. It just wiped out everything. … He must have been gassed to the floor.”

Caruso was about to close down his coffee cart for the day when the crash occurred.

“I was just getting ready to leave, and I had a customer with me,” Caruso said. “From behind us I hear a loud engine roar and loud screeching tires. Someone screamed really loud. I stepped back onto the sidewalk. The gentleman next to me got hit and killed, and another gentleman.”

“It was like an angel had moved me,” Caruso added. “I heard the scream. I felt it in my back, and I just stepped back one step. [The driver] must have grazed my leg — that’s how much I missed it by.”

The driver spun out of control after hitting the two men and the truck, only coming to a stop after striking a Volvo that had just made a K-turn on 42nd St., video of the crash shows. The driver of the Volvo wasn’t seriously hurt, cops said.

“It happened so fast I didn’t even look back when I heard the screeching. I just stepped back. As soon as it hit, I looked to my left and the gentleman was laying on the floor. I was in such shock. There was so much chaos, people screaming,” Caruso is quoted by the New York Daily News.