11-year-old boy killed by speeding hit-run driver in Flatbush, Brooklyn

Rondell Grant

DeCrescenzo for News

Naquan Mandry is under arrest in death of 11-year-old boy.

DelMundo for News

Tears run down face of Dwayne Grant, 15, as he speaks of the hit-and-run death of his brother Rondell. An 11-year-old boy attending a family barbecue died early Saturday after he was struck by a speeding  hit-and-run driver in Brooklyn in front of horrified relatives. Cops collared the 19-year-old driver at his home about 12 hours after the wreck and charged him with leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in death. The black Honda, illuminated only by its running lights, roared down E. 43rd St. in East Flatbush about 1:20 a.m., police said. The car hit Rondell Grant just as he stepped beyond a double-parked car and into the street near his grandparents’ home. “They just hit him and he flew,” said the victim’s brother Dwayne Grant, 15, who felt for his sibling’s faint pulse. “I shook him and he just looked at me,” Dwayne said. “I don’t believe he’s gone.” Rondell and his siblings had spent the evening at their paternal grandparents’ house just a block from their own home. After eating, the family sought to escape the apartment’s scorching heat by heading out into the night air, relatives said. Two cars that may have been racing sped along E. 43rd St., prompting the party’s adults to warn the kids to stay on the sidewalk. “We were like, ‘Everybody get off the street!’” said Dwayne, a rising sophomore at Automotive Technical High School. “But Rondell went to look at the cars because he likes cars.” The impact – captured by a neighbor’s surveillance camera – sent Rondell flying through the air and crashing against a parked scooter. As Dwayne stared down at his brother, other relatives ran toward the street. “I was downstairs sleeping and all I heard was squealing tires and a bang,” said the boy’s aunt, Una Alphonso, 41. “He didn’t move to me – he didn’t even look like he was breathing.”

“His brothers were over him saying, ‘Get up! You got to get up!’” she remembered. “His father was rolling on the floor saying, ‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’” Rondell, who died a short time later at Kings County Hospital, was one of nine children and had recently finished the fifth grade at Brooklyn’s Public School 208. He was  enrolled at Intermediate School 285 this fall. A witness recognized the Honda and called police, an NYPD source said. Detectives found the car about 1 p.m., parked outside the home of Naquan Mandry, 19, on Linden Blvd. in Brooklyn. The Honda’s front bumper was damaged and it had a broken windshield and what appeared to be hair fibers on the hood.

Carl Balkarran, Rondell’s 19-year-old cousin, stood with more than a dozen family and friends outside his grandmother’s house Saturday evening, near a candlelight memorial. “There is relief,” he said. “I hope he goes to jail. What he did was wrong.” Anita Goodman, the victim’s grandmother, was too distraught to immediately consider forgiveness. “You just ruined a whole family,” she said. Several relatives had to physically restrain Rondell’s mother Saturday night inside her home, a block away from the accident scene, as she thrashed and shrieked. Her screams could be heard from the street.

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