A hard-working Mexican immigrant was killed last week by a heartless hit-and-run driver who struck him near a Brooklyn intersection — leaving the man to die in the same way his father did four decades ago.
Felix Mendez, 49, of Lafayette Avenue, had been walking through the intersection of Lafayette and Bedford Avenue at about 3 a.m. on Thursday when a car struck him, according to the NYPD.
Instead of stopping, the driver continued north on Bedford — leaving behind a gravely-injured Mendez, cops said.
He was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in critical condition, and was later pronounced dead.
Alejandro Flores, Mendez’s 45-year-old friend and neighbor, told The Post that his pal died in eerily similar fashion to his father, who was killed in a hit-and-run in Mexico 40 years ago.
“His father was riding a bike, and he was killed by a drunk driving a car,” Flores said of Mendez, who was just 8 years old at the time. “Someone came to his house and told his mother, ‘Your husband is dead in the road.’”
“He always remembered that,” Flores continued. “Now it’s the same for him. It’s very sad.”
The victim’s 40-year-old nephew, Francisco Mendez, said he’d already told his uncle’s four siblings, who live in Mexico, and his son, Leonardo, who lives in California, about his passing.
“Leonardo, he’s 22. He started crying. He cannot talk, he’s crying,” Francisco Mendez said. “They talked very regularly. They never went more than two weeks. They are very close. Felix separated [from the mother] a long time ago, but he is always taking care of his son.”
Flores said he and Felix Mendez grew close during their years working at a restaurant on Broad Street in the late 2000s — “I got him that job, we were the only Mexicans here,” he said.
Felix Mendez, who came to America around 1999, was working to fund the construction of a house in Puebla, Mexico, which he’d been working on for the last three years.
Eventually, he wanted to move back to Mexico and become a pig farmer, Flores said. But the work had gone slowly, since Felix Mendez was often siphoning off money to send to his son out west.
“Everybody’s dream is to do this: To make money and build for themselves,” Flores said. “And he did it! The only delay he had was the money he was sending his son. … He only stopped building the house when he has to send this money.”
Flores remembered Felix Mendez as an incredibly hard worker, putting in tons of hours and late nights at his two restaurant jobs.
But he also tried to keep himself in shape, and hit the track three days a week no matter what he’d been doing the night before.
“Felix worked very, very hard — he never stopped working,” Flores said. “Even after working late nights, he’d wake up at 7 a.m. and run on the track nearby.”
The two had hoped to one day run the New York City Marathon.
“The marathon passes right by here, and every year we sit here and say, ‘We’re going to do this,’” Flores said. “But the time is coming, and we are working seven days and we can’t get the time to train. So we have been saying we want to do this, but we haven’t.”
Francisco Mendez, the nephew, said they’re trying to send his uncle’s body home to Puebla. But it’s been hard raising enough money to do so.
“We’re doing it only through people we know, $5 here, $10 there,” he said. “It’s very difficult.”