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A minivan driver involved in a hit-and-run incident that allegedly targeted a German couple – leading to the tragic death and near decapitation of a woman while critically injuring her husband – now faces charges related to the horrifying Midtown collision, authorities reported on Thursday.
Mohammed Abouzaid, a 40-year-old resident of The Bronx, has been charged with failing to yield to a pedestrian and not reporting the accident after leaving the scene. He is currently awaiting his court appearance in Manhattan Criminal Court.
“I did not hit anybody,” Abouzaid, who has no prior arrests, allegedly told authorities when he was picked up, according to cops and sources.
According to police, the victim, Alexandra Sabine Lewalter Maric, 50, from Hamburg, lost her life when the driver of a 2001 Toyota Sienna reversed at high speed at the intersection of East 40th Street and Fifth Avenue at approximately 2:40 p.m. on Wednesday.
As the driver — who was facing east on East 40th Street, blocking the intersection — backed up, he pinned the husband and wife between his car and a box truck stopped at the light, according to the sources.
The woman was nearly decapitated on impact and pronounced dead, the sources said.
Her 55-year-old husband — who was celebrating his birthday — suffered a fractured skull but was being treated at Bellevue Hospital in stable condition, sources said.
Graphic videos obtained by The Post show first responders tending to the motionless, bloodied woman on the ground in front of the truck, checking her pulse and ultimately realizing her head was nearly detached.
Abouzaid allegedly fled in the minivan — which had a vanity plate reading “TIMES SQUARE” and a Mississippi tag — only to be picked up by one of the NYPD’s new Quality of Life teams an hour later at West 38th Street and Eighth Avenue, authorities and sources said.