Fatal NYC hit-and-run driver had beef over love interest

A Queens man sitting in front of a bodega was killed when a woman who might have been aiming for someone else slammed into him with a car, police and witnesses said.

Surveillance video of the deadly crash shows Milton Storch, 59, sitting on a walker in front of Rohan Deli on Beach 20th Street early Saturday, when a black Honda Civic on the corner backs up, stops, then suddenly drives forward toward the store’s entrance and strikes him.

The car sent Storch flying, head over heels. His prone body — stuck between the vehicle and the building — was struck again when the Honda driver reversed and sped away, according to the footage.

The doomed man was a fixture on the corner of Beach 20th Street and New Haven Avenue, where he was killed, one neighborhood resident said.

The man “didn’t bother nobody. Every morning when I pass here he’s here. He sit down here, drink coffee, smoke cigarette… Wrong place, wrong time,” said Jorge Alberto Senquis, 53.

A second man was also hurt in the grisly incident, in which passersby could be seen in the clip stepping over the victim as he laid on the Far Rockaway sidewalk.

The Honda driver had been arguing with another woman, possibly about a romantic interest, on the street outside the deli just before 7:20 a.m. when she jumped behind the wheel of the parked car, police and witnesses said.

At one point, the woman who had been sparring with the Honda driver was captured by surveillance cameras as she tried to drag the motorist out of the car’s window.

Unsuccessful, the woman gave up and walked toward the deli. A few seconds later, the crazed driver aimed the vehicle for her adversary — killing the unsuspecting man instead, police said.

Storch, of Far Rockaway, was pronounced dead at St. John’s Hospital.

The women know each other “and they don’t get along,” a police spokeswoman said.

The rival women were part of a larger group, and one may have been coming on to the other woman’s romantic interest, said an employee of a nearby store who didn’t want to give his name.

Freddie Garcia, 18, was working the laundromat three doors down from the deli when he saw the women arguing.  

The two women had been in the deli and in good spirits, but when they went outside, things soured, he said.

“Somehow they get into the fight. After that they were fighting for maybe five minutes,” said Garcia, who said the dispute unnerved him so much he locked the doors to keep his customers from getting hurt.

“I got worried when they got into the car because I was thinking they high or drunk,“ he added.