A Brooklyn mother of six clinging to life Tuesday after a daredevil driver slammed into her Lyft was headed home from a mission of mercy to see her coronavirus-stricken parents, heartbroken friends said.
Malka Braver was just around the corner from her Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment when the speeding Dodge Charger T-boned the Lyft, sending her hurtling from the Honda Accord at Bedford and DeKalb Aves. early Monday, cops said.
Braver, whose youngest child is just 6 months old, remained at Bellevue Hospital in critical condition Tuesday.
“She’s stable and getting better,” the victim’s brother told the Daily News, added that she remained unconscious. The brother declined to give his name.
“We need her,” said another relative, who also declined to give his name. “We pray for her, and we hope that one day we’ll see her on her feet. … Where there is life there is hope, right?”
“She’s a very, very special person, a very special mother,” the relative added.
A family friend now baby-sitting one of the victim’s kids expressed her hopes for a happy ending to the tragic wreck.
“We’re traumatized and devastated,” said the friend. “I think they’re sedating her and taking it slowly. When everything is fine, they’ll wake her up. We’re just praying and hoping that she comes out healthy really soon.”
Braver, when not tending to her kids, was frequently checking on her parents after the couple began suffering from COVID-19 symptoms, the friend said.
“She was always so concerned for her parents, even with her busy household,” the friend said, choking back tears. “She was always making sure they were doing OK. She just went to see how they were doing. She was almost [back] at her house.”
Surveillance video shows the Honda was slowly entering the intersection as the speeding Charger blew through a steady red light. The Charger struck the back of the car where Braver was seated.
The Accord spun around from the impact, crashing into a parked white van and mounting the sidewalk, the video shows.
The Charger was adorned with a wrap-around design from the horror movie “Scream” and a vanity plate that reads “SCR3AM.” Several videos showing the car performing reckless stunts were shared in recent weeks on the Instagram page @jaydollasofficial_392, which was deactivated Monday following the crash.
One video showing the car doing donuts with another vehicle in the Kings Plaza Shopping Center parking lot was apparently taken just hours before the crash.
Sources identified the Charger driver as 22-year-old Ryan Ortiz of Middletown, N.Y. He and the Lyft driver, also 22, were both hospitalized in stable condition. No charges were immediately filed against Ortiz, but the investigation continues, cops said.
Once Braver was hospitalized, friends and relatives volunteered to look after her children while her husband kept vigil at Bellevue.
“She has beautiful children, she’s always taking care of them,” said the family friend. “She’s always here to borrow anything or to help each other out. She’s a very easygoing person, a positive person.”
Friends hope criminal charges are filed against Ortiz. At the very least, they want him to realize that he nearly destroyed an entire family with one irresponsible act.
“[There’s] a nursing baby, waiting for his mother’s milk— just because somebody was so careless,” the family friend said as tears streamed down her face. “We’re basically getting the kids ready every day in the morning, and [now] everything stops, it’s at a standstill. And the kids can’t have their mom.
“I’m devastated, I can’t stop crying,” she said while watching one of Braver’s young sons. “I was doing his hair this morning and I was crying.”
