Pak Uber driver among five killed in NYC crash

NEW YORK: A Pakistani Uber driver and three of his four passengers were killed when a speeding motorist, travelling in the opposite direction veered into their lane and hit them head-on over the weekend in Long Island, a suburb of New York City, according to the police.

Farhan Zahid, 32, the driver, died on the spot along with three of his passengers, the police said on Monday. The fourth passenger, a woman, was taken to hospital in critical condition. The driver in the other vehicle was also killed.

According to investigators, the car that hit Zahid’s Uber was speeding. But they said the probe is not yet complete.

Meanwhile, Zahid’s distraught wife, 26-year-old Hifsa Ahmad, said she’s at a loss on how to tell the couple’s three young children that their father won’t be coming home. “The kids have been asking me since yesterday when their father is coming,” she told Newsday newspaper.

“Why is he still at work? Why isn’t he coming?’ They really don’t understand.”

Zahid and Ms Ahmad were married in Pakistan in 2014. She had lived on Long Island, as do most of her family, since 2008. Zahid followed his wife to the US in 2016 and found work as an Uber driver to support his wife and their kids — son Ayan, 6, daughter Mishal, 3, and son Ahaan, 16 months.

“I have no support; he was working; he was the only one,” Ms Ahmad tearfully told the newspaper. “He was a good partner. A good husband. He was really nice.”

Ms. Ahmad added she was getting ready to open a beauty salon in Bayshore, Long Island, next month and the family was planning to travel to Pakistan in October to attend the wedding of Zahid’s sister.

An Uber representative said: “Our thoughts are with the families of Mr Zahid and the four others who lost their lives in this heartbreaking crash...”