Health aide fatally struck by NYPD vehicle was walking home to hang out with landlord
Just minutes before an NYPD SUV fatally struck her as it raced to an emergency, a Queens home health aide told her landlord she’d drop by for a visit when she got home from work.
Victim Zabina Gafoor wasn’t known for being late so when she didn’t show up back home Friday night her landlord knew something was wrong. Landlord Ann Alcock lived downstairs from the victim in the Rockaways for the past 17 years and was a close friend.
“She said to open my apartment door because she’s gonna stop by me before she go upstairs,” Ann Alcock said of their final phone call.
“So I did open the door, and I’m waiting for her. And after waiting — 8:30, 9 o’clock — she didn’t call me. She didn’t come. And I wonder when I go to bed.”
The next morning, she saw police coming and going from Gafoor’s apartment upstairs and when she called, Gafoor did not pick up.
She called her friend’s teenage son and he broke the shocking news that Gafoor was dead.
Gafoor, 52, was standing in a bicycle lane on Beach Channel Drive near Beach 32nd St. in Far Rockaway about 8:30 p.m. Friday when a NYPD Ford Explorer carrying four cops slammed into her.
The officers were headed west on Beach Channel Drive, responding to a call about an officer needing assistance, police said. They activated their siren but a woman driving a Toyota Corolla “failed to observe” the police vehicle as it approached from behind, cops said. When the Corolla tried to make a left turn the NYPD vehicle slammed into its driver’s side then careened into Gafoor, police said.
Witness Kevin Garcia told The News that the officers in the vehicle rushed to her aide in a desperate attempt to perform “intense CPR.”
“The cops were worried about the person they hit,” Garcia told the News. “When they got out of the car they got out with the first aid kit, and tried to do anything they could.”
The four police officers were taken to Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital with minor injuries. The woman driving the Corolla wasn’t hurt.
As of Sunday, no one has been charged or disciplined for the crash as the investigation continues, an NYPD spokeswoman said.
Gafoor had just left her job as a home health aide for Johanna Stoehr, 68. Stoehr told the News that Gafoor decided to walk instead of taking a taxi.
Sometimes Gafoor would get a bus home, her landlord said Sunday, but she’d make the 15-minute walk on nice nights.
“If she has to go somewhere, shopping, go anywhere, she goes and come home,” Alcock said. “From work, she always comes home.”
“She likes music. She likes to dance. And she liked to laugh,” Alcock added. “She would laugh, laugh. She’s closer than a friend to me. She’s like a family member.”
Alcock saw Gafoor the night before her death. “We talked, laughed,” she said. “Nothing, nothing can bring her back.”
