More than 300 mourners packed a Bronx church Saturday to mourn a granddad and his 10-year-old granddaughter, who were both fatally mowed down by a motorist who jumped a curb on Halloween.
The loss of Louis Perez Jr., 65, a Vietnam War vet who earned the Purple Heart, and little Nyanna Aquil, both of Morris Park, is “a terrible nightmare,” said Perez’s son, Louie.
The pair was trick-or-treating when they were killed.
Nyanna “would come home and say, ‘Grandma, I’m going to dance for you,’ ” said Miriam Perez, Louis Perez’s widow. “Every time, I would cry, and now I know why — she was here on borrowed time.”
Her husband of 38 years was a perfectionist, said Miriam, who compared their relationship to that of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
“We fought, and we loved. He was a passionate man,” she said.
Nyanna’s mother, Natalya Perez, also spoke. “My emotions are a little heavy today,” said Natalya, who is Nyanna’s mother and Louis Perez’s daughter. “It’s just a tough situation to be in. I never ever thought that this would be happening a week ago.”
Driver Howard Unger, 52, is believed to have suffered a seizure behind the wheel when he smashed his car into the group. Kristian Leka, 24, was also killed while saving his 9-year-old sister. Several others were hurt.
The accident created a scene of bedlam at Jacobi Hospital, Natalya Perez recalled.
sisters (from left) Sanaya and Yasmina just hours before she was killed.Instagram
“As soon as I get to the hospital, it’s chaos, and my daughter is being worked on, and my other daughter has a neck brace on her, and my other daughter is sitting in a chair, fine,” she said. “I almost collapsed when I saw them working on Nyanna.” Her othre two children “were okay, but still crying and scared, and it was a frantic scene.”
Doctors and nurses spent all night offering her hugs, which Perez declined, until, she said, “it dawned on me that they’re hurting more than I’m hurting right now.
“As far as everything else goes, this is a tragedy for my entire family, and the whole community is devastated, and I just want everybody to know that we’re okay. We’re going to get through this, we’re going to ight through it. It’s just a tough situation to be in,” she said.
Nyanna’s uncle, Louie Perez, said the little girl “had an aura to her. The way that she walked, it was as though she pranced. I thought that she was going to be a supermodel some day.”
Perez said his father Louis “was my number one fan.”
“He was teaching me how to be a man, how to be a husband, how to be a father,” he said.“But now it’s time for me to take those lessons, and teach them to my children, and teach them to anyone else.”
Perez ended his eulogy with his father’s signature phrase, “All the best, all the time, always.”