Daughter of man fatally run over by Parks employee at Coney Island sues NYC

A man sleeping on a Coney Island beach was accidentally run over and killed by a city Parks employee — and it took two months for authorities to tell his family he was dead, his daughter said in a lawsuit.

Yessenia Campos Cruz, 25, claimed she was left in the dark for weeks after her father, Mario Campos Rojas, 47, was crushed by the Parks Department truck.

The grisly incident happened July 18, 2022, when employee William Samedi drove his department-issued Ford F-250 along the beach around 2:30 a.m., according to a wrongful death lawsuit Cruz filed against the city and Parks Department in Brooklyn Supreme Court seeking $10 million.

Samedi told investigators he “felt a bump, which is usual for me and when I get out of the vehicle, I seen the man [sic] body.”


Police investigating the scene at Coney Island.
Samedi said Campos Rojas was still alive shortly after he was run over, but died before police arrived.
Robert Mecea

“We had given up on finding him when we were contacted by the medical examiner at the end of September of 2022 to inform my family of my father’s death and the way that he died,” Cruz said in court papers. “I was overcome with grief for weeks.”

It is unclear if Campos Rojas was estranged from his family.

Campos Cruz declined to comment and her attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

The Parks Department also did not respond to requests for comment.

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