A prominent pediatrician accused of mowing down a dad and his 6-year-old daughter before leaving the scene of the crash confessed to a good Samaritan nurse before driving off, the nurse told The Post.
Dr. Sam Leuzzi, 66, drove his black GMC truck into Guy Seth, 51, and his daughter, Zoey, who was sitting on her dad’s shoulders, on Jan. 9 at busy Arthur Kill and Drumgoole roads in Greenridge, police said.
The little girl fractured her skull, requiring emergency brain surgery.
Her father suffered a concussion.
The off-duty nurse insists Leuzzi did not — as his lawyer implies — render aid to either victim, and then remained silent when arriving cops asked for the driver.
“I thought he [Leuzzi] was going to be a responsible adult and tell police,” fumed the nurse, who wished to remain unidentified. “I said to him, ‘What happened?’ And he said to me, ‘I couldn’t see them. I didn’t see.’”
The off-duty nurse said she drove up to the “very rainy” scene shortly after 5 p.m. and found Guy Seth unconscious in the street and little Zoey “knocked out of her shoes” on the sidewalk.
Leuzzi was standing next to the “crying” girl.
The veteran nurse said Leuzzi — who was “absolutely not in shock and extremely calm” — held an umbrella over her head while she “kneeled down to assess” the dad.
She assumed the pediatrician would speak to arriving cops, who “asked 100 times, ‘Who’s the driver? Where’s the driver?’”
The nurse, who the following day viewed police bodycam footage and gave cops a statement at the 123rd Precinct, said Leuzzi acted “like a bystander.”
She said the bodycam shows Leuzzi “standing around. After Guy and Zoey are loaded into an ambulance, then you see him nonchalantly walk to his truck. He puts on his blinker and slowly just goes about his business and drives off.”
Leuzzi, of Middletown, N.J., has a thriving practice in the Grant City section of Staten Island.
He was arrested the day after the crash and charged with leaving the scene of an accident without reporting it, a misdemeanor, violating right-of-way and failure to use due care laws, according to the criminal complaint.
“I was driving. I was turning left and I struck a pedestrian, an adult, and child,” he later told investigators, according to a complaint.
“I did not tell anyone I was the driver, I did not give my information because nobody asked me. I left. I felt terrible what had happened and I was going to go to the police precinct in the morning.”
Neither the Staten Island District Attorney’s office nor the state Office of Court Administration would address why Leuzzi was arraigned virtually from a hospital.
He pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance.
Attorney Ravi Batra, who represents the Seth family, said the nurse also told him that Leuzzi confessed to her that his vehicle struck Guy and Zoey and that he never rendered aid at the scene.
Batra is now calling for DA McMahon to upgrade the misdemeanor charges against Leuzzi to leaving the scene serious injury, an E felony.
In a letter to the DA dated Feb. 1, Batra charges the pediatrician made the incident a hit-and-run “after he walked around at the accident scene, spoke to [the nurse] — who was helping his victims — as he held an umbrella above her, and knew that he had ‘seriously injured’” his victims.”
The letter continues: “Shockingly, Sam Leuzzi rendered no medical care at the scene before he slinked away to escape his moral and legal responsibility.”
Batra said Zoey has a titanium plate in her head and Guy suffers from head trauma and double-vision.
“I don’t want this to be a hit-and-walk,” Batra told The Post.
Leuzzi’s lawyer, Joseph Corozzo, previously insisted his client “remained on the scene tending to both parties and waited for the ambulance to take the father and daughter to the hospital.”
He also said the NYPD and the District Attorney’s Office “have provided evidence that proves this was an accident occurring during a terrible violent storm.”
