Mom of NYC passenger killed in stunt driving mishap recalls gut-wrenching goodbye: ‘Mommy’s here’
The heartbroken mom of the young passenger ಞkilled Sunday in an apparent stunt-driving mishap in the Bronx said she gave her son and “best friend” a gut-wrenching goodbye as he lay dead in the hospital, telling him “Mommy’s here.”
“He was amazing,” Sabrina Ro🏅berson-McCray said of her 21-year-old son, Giovante Roberson, who died when the Chrysler 300 he was riding in spun out of control and slammed into a parked fuel truck in Hunts Point, killing him and a 15-year-old girl.
“Those 21 years we༺re the best years of my life,” Roberson-McCray, 44, told The Post at their Brooklyn home on Tuesday. “He൲ was my best friend.”
“He loved Michael Jackson, mimickꦇing him,” she continued. “I’ve got t𝐆he videos of him doing the dance. He lived to travel. He loved to help me. Everything he did for me. He was here with me every day.”
Giovante worked alongside his mom as a deli clerk at BJ’s, where she is a supervisor.
But the pair work🥃ed differ♍ent shifts, so someone would always be home with her two young daughters, ages 8 and 10.
“Gio” was never involved in guns, drugs or gangs, she said. And he’d never been arrested.
Instead, he loved playing video games like Modern Warfare or Fortnite, going to Applebee’s with his family and cars — always cars.
“That was his let out,” his mom told The Post. “He spent his weekends with the car community. And the car community loved my son, because he did videos for them. When he came, that’s when the party began.
“He was just all-around amazing.”
But Giovante’s life was cut short at about 3:30 a.m. Sunday in a crash authorities said was caused by the reckless driving.
The unidentified 23-year-old driver was allegedly pulling stunts behind the wheel near the intersection of Bryant and Viele avenues when he hit a dip in the road that sent the car careening, the truck’s owner told The Post on Monday.
“There was salt on the road, and there’s a dip,🌊 so when he hit that, he started losing control,” said the man, who identified himself as Chip.
The shocking caught-on-camera crash also killed Sabrina Villagomez, 15, and put the driver and another passenger — a 17-year-old girl — in t🦋he hospital.
Roberson-McCray drove slowly to the hospital after she g🎀ot the call — she knew he was already gone.
But during the sorrowful trip, she remembered🍒 how good of a baby he was, she said. He never cried, and he listened when she taught him something like the difference between night and day.
“My heart just br🌟eaks,” she said. “He was different. He was like nobo𓆉dy else.”
She wanted to hold his body at the hospital, touch his dreadlocks. But she wasn’t allowed. So she just stood there for a bit.
“I told him I loved him,” Roberson-McCray said. “I said, ‘Baby, I’m here. Mommy’s here. Mommy’s here.’”
Neighbor Rosetta Jordan, 74, told The Post that Giovante ✨often helped her bring belongings up and down the stairs a🔯fter she suffered a stroke and had open-heart surgery.
“He was a good k꧟id,” she said. “He wasn’t in any gang. These kids, they are out here smokinꦅg and drinking — none of that was him.”
“He was in and out,” she continued. “He was polite and respectful: ‘Good morning,’ ‘Have a good day.’ He didn’t get in trouble.”
Workers from the nearby Bronx Junk Car Depot told The Post that the wide-open ro🌺ads in the industrial area where Giovante died make it a magnet for street racers.
“It’s pretty normal for them t🥃o race and do donuts over here — especially on the weekends and midnights,” said one worker, who didn’t want to be named.
“In the summertime, it gets really bad,” he added. “We see it all the t꧂ime.”
But the accident — which workers said was 🍃the second in a week — was exceptionally 💙awful.
The Chrysler turned sideways as it slid into the truck, and hi🌜t with such force that it pushed the mammoth tanker back several feet, according ꦉto the video footage.
Giovante was ꦓsitting in the front passenger seat, which suffered the brunt of the impact.
His death has shattered his family. His little sisters wept when his mom told them he wasn’t coming home, and his girlfriend is devastated, Roberson-McCray said.
The family will move to Atlanta in June, Roberson-McCray said. They had planned it already — but Giovante’s death cemented it.
“I can’t stay here,” she said. “I don’t want to have a shrine in the middle of my house … I am going to pack it up, and I’m taking his stuff with me.”
“It’s so much that was taken away from me,'” Roberson-McCray continued. “And I’m not going to get that back. He was my lifeline … he was my best friend.”
