A 3-year-old girl died Saturday after the car she was riding in with her family swerved into the path of a garbage truck to avoid hitting a manhole cover on a Bronx road stripped for resurfacing, officials said.
Little Sophia Aguirre was in a car seat next to her mother in the back of her family’s silver Chevrolet Malibu when the driver, Sophia’s 52-year-old grandfather, veered into the adjacent lane on Bruckner Blvd. near 142nd St. in Port Morris about 10 a.m.
He was trying to avoid hitting a manhole cover exposed by the stripped road when he veered into the private garbage truck’s path, witnesses told cops.
The truck slammed into the family’s car, sending it careening into one of the concrete stanchions holding up the elevated expressway above, officials said.
The road was stripped by the city’s Department of Transportation about a week ago, officials said.
It is scheduled to be repaved in the coming weeks, a city DOT spokesperson told the Daily News.
Firefighters had to rip off the doors of the mangled car to get the victims out, officials said.
EMTs rushed little Sophia to Lincoln Hospital, where she died about an hour later, police said.
Her 27-year-old mother, grandfather and 52-year-old grandmother were rushed to the same hospital with minor injuries, officials said.
Relatives wept outside the hospital’s emergency room as they consoled each other.
“She was my little cousin,” one heartbroken man said, his eyes welling up in tears.
The garbage truck driver, an employee of Avid Waste Systems, was not injured.
A call to Avid for comment was not returned Saturday.
No charges were filed against anyone involved in the crash.
The asphalt around the manhole was elevated as a safety measure called ramping — it is a process that contractors are required to take with street repairs, a DOT spokesperson said.
The DOT responded to the crash site and “found no immediate safety concerns” but will continue to monitor the roadway, the agency spokesperson said.
As of Friday, 19 people have died in motor vehicle crashes across the city this year — compared to 16 during the same period last year.
