Four members of a churchgoing Queens family — including two young children — died in a horrific car wreck yesterday as they drove through North Carolina on their way to a family reunion in Alabama, sources said.
William Hicks, 34 — who was hoping to introduce his children to his father after last seeing him a decade ago — fell asleep at the wheel at 9 a.m. on I-77 in Dobson, NC, sending his car careening into oncoming traffic.
His 8-year-old son, Elijah, futilely tried to wake him, but the family minivan rammed head-on into a pick-up truck and a car, the family’s pastor, Bishop Lester Williams told The Post.
The elder Hicks, a diabetes sufferer, wife Natalie, 34, son Wayne Jr., 10 and daughter Natalia, 2, who was thrown from the vehicle, died.
Elijah and his brothers Josiah and John, both 5, survived but were hospitalized with serious injuries.
The elder Hicks “was looking forward to reuniting with his father,” said Williams, pastor of the Community Church of Christ in Jamaica, where both Hicks, who worked at a food-distribution company, and his wife, a nurse’s aide, were deacons. “His father had never seen the children and now he never will.”
The Jamaica couple had been married for 11 years after meeting at the church, which family members said was the center of their lives.
“She was a good, churchgoing person,” said Natalie’s grandmother, Elgytha Tavaras, 86. “I’m so sad about it that I don’t know what to do.”
Three people in the other vehicles were injured.