{"id":164492,"date":"2026-03-15T23:11:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T23:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/164492\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T23:11:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T23:11:34","slug":"death-of-man-in-crash-into-backhoe-in-bronx-unfolded-in-front-victims-autobody-shop-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/164492\/","title":{"rendered":"Death of man in crash into backhoe in Bronx unfolded in front victim’s autobody shop: family"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man who died after the SUV in which he was riding rear-ended a parked backhoe<\/a> in the Bronx was steps away from his autobody shop, where unused equipment had been left outside for weeks, according to the victim\u2019s grieving family.<\/p>\n

Mohamed Salim, 44, was killed when the 2017 Toyota Highlander in which he was riding shotgun slammed into a backhoe parked on E. 233rd St. near Provost Ave. in Baychester<\/a> around 10:30 p.m. Friday. The 24-year-old driver had lost control of the vehicle, police said.<\/p>\n

The crash unfolded in front of House of Benz, a Mercedes auto workshop owned by Salim, who opened the business after working as a mechanical engineer for Mercedes for more than a decade, his heartbroken family told the Daily News.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy son is gone,\u201d lamented the victim\u2019s mother, Bibi Salim. \u201cWhat is money or power if I end up dying for no reason, like my son?\u201d<\/p>\n

It was especially tragic Salim died during Ramadan, a holy month for muslims, his heartbroken mom said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will do charity in honor of him. That\u2019s all I can do now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The victim\u2019s family said the backhoe the SUV crashed into had been parked in the same spot for two weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city sanitation department parked a front-end loader there. It was broken during the winter storm, with a hydraulic hose broken and oil on the ground,\u201d said Jidat Kondayya, the victim\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey put some cones around it and left it there, right next to where my son\u2019s shop is,\u201d Kondayya said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe driver crashed into that front-end loader and destroyed the vehicle,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cthe fire department had to cut the doors off to get them out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medics rushed Salim to Jacobi Hospital<\/a>, but he could not be saved. The young driver and another 44-year-old man in the backseat were taken to the same hospital and are expected to survive, according to police.<\/p>\n

Kondayya puts some of the blame for the crash on the city, alleging the backhoe was parked illegally. A city sanitation lot is one block away.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat front-end loader was parked there for more than two weeks, double-parked in the middle of the street,\u201d Kondayya said. \u201cIf I double-park, the police give me a ticket. But the city leaves a huge machine there for weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not telling you the law. I\u2019m telling you logic, common sense,\u201d he insisted.<\/p>\n

The victim\u2019s younger brother was more reflective.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of red flags about this situation, but I\u2019m waiting for the detectives before drawing any conclusions,\u201d said Jason Kondayya, 35, adding: \u201cIt was obviously a car accident involving city equipment, but we don\u2019t know exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere could be other factors like speed, the driver, whether someone was under the influence. I don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not looking to blame anyone. We\u2019re just trying to get to the bottom of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salim, whose family is Guyanese, started working for Mercedes-Benz immediately after high school, according to his family. The luxury car company paid for him to attend college in Arizona, where he got an engineering degree, his father said.<\/p>\n

Salim worked for Mercedes-Benz for 14 years before striking out on his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a few years he saved money and branched out into his own business,\u201d Jason Kondayya said.<\/p>\n

The News has reached out to the city Department of Sanitation<\/a> for comment.<\/p>\n

There have been no arrests as members of the NYPD Collision Investigation Squad work to determine what sparked the crash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who died after the SUV in which he was riding rear-ended a parked backhoe in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,265,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-164492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}