The daughter of veteran MTA driver William Pena tearfully recalled her doomed father’s final words to her just 24 hours before his horrific death.
“He said, ‘I love you. Be careful,’” a weeping Gabrielle Pena recounted to the Daily News on Thursday, her voice trailing off.
The daughter’s heartbreaking words came as prosecutors threw the book at Domonic Whilby, 22, of Georgia, who was at the wheel of a stolen box truck that slammed into Pena’s bus early Wednesday morning in Greenwich Village.
Whilby, the nephew of model/actor Tyson Beckford, was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, assault, operating a vehicle while intoxicated and aggravated driving while intoxicated.
“The defendant was in New York for less than half a day before he began his reign of terror on the citizens of New York County,” Assistant District Attorney Randolph Clarke said at Whilby’s Thursday night arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court.
“Higher charges are being considered,” Clarke said.
Clarke revealed Whilby’s blood-alcohol level at the time of the crash was .18%, more than twice the legal limit. Whilby, who faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted, was ordered held without bail.
Pena, a 17-year Metropolitan Transportation Authority veteran, died at the scene of 5:30 a.m. crash.
On Thursday, his 17-year-old daughter sat alongside her mother in the family’s Hillsdale, N.J., home after suffering through a restless night spent waiting for a beloved patriarch who would never return.
“We can’t sleep,” said Pena’s longtime partner, Nancy Rodriguez, her hair unkempt and dark circles beneath her eyes.
“It’s just that (the truck’s driver) took one life, but that life impacted hundreds of others,” said Rodriguez, still clad in her pajamas. “We don’t want this to be just another death.”
RELATED: BUS DRIVER KILLED IN WRECK WITH STOLEN TRUCK
Pena, 49, was found dead beneath his 21-ton bus after it careened into the sidewalk along with the stolen truck, cutting a path of destruction that injured three other people. Police and witnesses said Whilby ran a red light before hitting the bus .
Whilby was arrested after cops found him unconscious inside the truck.
Sources told The News that a drunken Whilby was partying with Beckford before getting tossed from Chelsea club 1Oak for loutish behavior about 90 minutes before the fatal crash.
Whilby then fell asleep in a nearby hotel before hijacking the parked 18 Rabbits Granola truck and speeding away, sources said.
The collision at Seventh Ave. and W. 14th St. caused the bus and truck to slam into a parked cab, a sidewalk scaffold, an adjoining building and a subway station entrance.
A review of video footage from inside the bus showed the carnage could have been worse, a source told The News.
Just minutes before the wreck, about 10 riders exited the bus at a stop on the crosstown M14 route, the source said. “By the grace of God, there was just one rider on the bus,” the source said.
The video showed the lone passenger flying out of his seat as shattered glass and smashed pieces of scaffolding tore through the vehicle. The crosstown trip that Pena was making early Wednesday “was always his route,” said Rodriguez. “He just said that he loved the people.”
She said she had no message for the man charged in connection with the crash that claimed the life of her high school sweetheart.
“There is nothing you can say,” she told The News. “If we got a call that Willie died of a heart attack, we say it was his time. But somebody took his life. It’s different.”
Funeral arrangements are pending, but the driver’s grief-stricken colleagues are planning a funeral procession of buses in his honor.
With Kerry Burke
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