A 73-year-old cabbie working the end of a 16-hour shift — four hours more than what is legal — mowed over an 88-year-old great-grandmother on the Upper West Side on Sunday, law enforcement sources said.
Taxi driver Salifu Abubkar of The Bronx struck and killed Luisa Rosario on the corner of Columbus Avenue and West 109th Street around 12:40 a.m. about a block from her home, cops said.
He was arrested and charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian.
The victim was in the crosswalk and had the light when she was struck.
Abubkar told police he had been on the road since 9 a.m., or about 16 hours, sources said. Cabbies aren’t supposed to work more than 12 hours by law.
His son Khalil, 21, said his father always works a minimum 16-hour shift every Saturday.
“Saturday, my father works a very long shift. He works 16 hours minimum on Saturdays,’’ Khalil said.
The son said his dad has four kids ages 18 to 30 and works four days a week to help support them.
“My father is a considerate, kind man. I can’t see how he would hurt anyone,’’ he added.
The Taxi and Limousine Commission suspended Abubkar’s license in the wake of the fatality, said agency spokesman Allan Fromberg.
Abubkar has been driving a cab in New York City since before the agency started keeping computerized records, so at least since 1989, according to the TLC.
He leases the cab from its owner and doesn’t work out of a specific garage, it said.
Rosario was the third pedestrian to die and at least the seventh hit since Friday evening.
Her family and friends were beside themselves with grief.
“It is very dangerous around here, especially the yellow cabs. They just fly around corners. One hit my grandmother four years ago on Amsterdam and 106. Now Luisa. This is insane!” said Elizabeth Herrera, 46, a neighbor and lifelong friend.
Rosario had four sons, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, a family member said.
The bloody weekend started Friday evening when a car hit and killed an 86-year-old woman on the Upper West Side, followed by another fatality Saturday night, when a 68-year-old man was struck and killed in Queens as he crossed the street against the traffic signal.
On Sunday, a 19-year-old passenger was killed when the car she was traveling in hit a guardrail on the Brooklyn parkway.
The spate of fatalities came days after Mayor Bill de Blasio gave a press conference touting the success of his Vision Zero program to reduce traffic crashes.
“We know it is critical to keep deepening Vision Zero because it works. It’s never been more necessary than now,” de Blasio said, saying fatalities from vehicular crashes were down 16 percent from last year.
But public data on the city’s website paints a less impressive picture of Vision Zero.
So far this year, total injuries and deaths as a result of crashes have only decreased 1.4 percent over the same period last year.
And the total number of crashes actually rose by more than 5 percent: 182,003 this year compared to 172,366 over the same period in 2014, according to the data.