Mere minutes before being mowed down by a dozing driver as she stood on a Queens sidewalk, college student Ava Conklin spent her final moments snapping a light-hearted selfie and sending it to her beloved family.
Conklin had just wrapped up her shift as a hostess at the upscale Rockaway Hotel and was waiting at a bus stop to go picnicking with her kid sister in Central Park when she sent the selfie at 2:14 p.m. ET Saturday.
“How does your whole life change in four minutes?” her heartbroken stepmother, Jennifer Duffy, asked Sunday.
At 2:17 p.m. ET, the 29-year-old driver of 2021 Hyundai Venue vaulted the sidewalk at Rockaway Beach Blvd. and Beach 108th St., slamming into Conklin at the bus stop.
Her 14-year-old sister Peyton stepped off an MTA bus to meet her big sister, texting Conklin “I’m here” — only to find herself surrounded by the crash’s aftermath.
She recognized her sister’s purse and the back of her head on the ground.
“All I could do was scream,” Peyton told the Daily News. “A bunch of people tried to calm me down but I told them, ‘Don’t try to calm me down! That’s my sister!’”
Two firefighters eventually pulled her away from the scene.
Conklin’s father showed up next and was devastated he wasn’t allowed into the ambulance with his dying daughter.
Medics rushed the teen to Brookdale University Hospital but she could not be saved.
Conklin’s favorite music was still playing in her earphones after she was hit, her still-shocked sister said.
Police took the driver into custody and questioned him but later released him without charges, an NYPD spokeswoman said. He could still face charges as the investigation continues.
Conklin, who just finished her first year studying children’s psychology at a college in Vermont, was living in Hell’s Kitchen with her mother. She hoped to have children of her own, her stepmom said.
Her father, who lives in Broad Channel, was too devastated to speak to a reporter Sunday. The bookshelves of his family’s home are lined with photos of Conklin taken throughout her life.
On Friday, Conklin sent her family a picture of herself giving the camera two thumbs up while happily at work at the Rockaway Hotel.
The driver, whose name has not been released by the NYPD, was going west on Rockaway Beach Blvd. when he fell asleep at the wheel, cops said. He was driving in the right lane, which ended and turned into a sidewalk, and he mounted the curb, cops said.
The driver slammed into three metal benches and hit Conklin, who was waiting for her younger sister’s bus to arrive. She suffered severe chest trauma.
Peyton called her mom right away but “the phone call dropped and I knew something had happened,” Duffy said. The stepmom got an immediate call back and a man’s voice said, “Your daughter was just hit by a car,” then hung up.
Duffy said she was told the driver worked for an auto body shop and was delivering parts overnight but said she still couldn’t believe he fell asleep, saying he’d have to swerve past cars to hit Conklin.
“It doesn’t logically make sense,” she said.
Conklin’s family described the teen as a bright soul with a taste for music by Mac Miller, MF Doom and Tyler the Creator.
The second oldest of five siblings and stepsiblings, Conklin made it a point to do fun “girl stuff” like manicures and face masks with her younger kin.
“She was always the emotional mediator” of the family, Peyton said. “I idolized her.”
”When my oldest went away to the military, [Ava] really stepped in as a big sister,” Duffy said.
Conklin’s death comes as the city faces a rise in road fatalities this year despite ongoing efforts to prevent traffic deaths.
In 2022, traffic deaths dropped for the first time in three years, according to city data, with 255 reported fatalities compared to 273 in all of 2021.
But that number is trending back up this year, with 106 deaths as of June 18, compared to 101 in the same time period last year.
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