NEW YORK — A pregnant traffic agent who gave birth to a boy as she lay dying in the hospital, hit by a runaway van, was buried Monday along with her son at a funeral attended by 1,000 mourners.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and hundreds of uniformed traffic agents joined relatives and friends in mourning Donnette Sanz and her son, Sean Michael Justin Sanz, who lay together, dressed in white, in an open casket.
“Let us pray for her and the baby boy she dreamed of, with her in eternity, in her good care,” Kelly said.
Sanz, 33, was crossing a Bronx street on her lunch break when she was struck. The impact sent her flying into the path of a yellow school bus, pinning her underneath.
About 30 bystanders rushed to hoist the 5-ton bus from her body in a rescue that “lifted the spirits of our entire city,” the mayor said.
Sanz died Aug. 14. Her son, who was born two months premature, died Friday.
During the two-hour service at the Community Protestant Church in the Bronx, Sanz was remembered as a dedicated worker and a loving wife who had donated a kidney to her husband, Rafael, shortly before their wedding four years ago.
Donnette Sanz had been a civilian member of the NYPD for two years, a job that required her to direct vehicles, write parking tickets and operate tow trucks. Unlike officers, traffic agents do not carry weapons.
The van driver, Walter Walker, 72, faces charges of criminally negligent homicide and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. A spokesman for the Bronx district attorney said Friday that prosecutors would wait for the medical examiner to determine the infant’s cause of death before deciding whether Walker would face additional charges.
In a court filing, police said the brakes on Walker’s van had deteriorated so badly it was unsafe to drive. Walker has said he tried to avoid hitting Sanz but was unable to stop.
