02-15-2002, 02:30 PM
Quote:Hit-and-Run Driver
In Second Spree
7 pedestrians hurt near Penn Station
The midtown madman returned to the scene of his crime yesterday, plowing a stolen car into crowds near Penn Station in a virtual replay of his rampage 48 hours earlier, police said.
Popadich, who gave up when he was cornered by cops in the basement of his New Jersey home, admitted stealing the car from a woman at gunpoint early yesterday. He also confessed to critically wounding his married girlfriend Sunday.
'I wanted to hurt more people,' says Ronald Popadich.
The unemployed loner scattered Valentine's Day pedestrians like bowling pins yesterday as he careened through one crosswalk at Seventh Ave. and W. 34th St., then continued into another packed walkway. Seven people were hurt, one critically.
It was the same spot where Popadich started his wild ride that injured at least 18 people in midtown and Chelsea on Tuesday.
"I don't know what is happening in this city," said social worker Mary George, 55, who suffered a broken ankle in yesterday's crash.
"It was like a domino effect," said Gerard Caldwell, 31, of the Bronx. "He started hitting people and they kept falling and falling."
Cops found a loaded .32-caliber gun — thought to be the weapon used in the carjacking and the girlfriend's shooting — in a coat left in the battered Volkswagen Jetta.
They also found the key to a room in an East Village hotel that features sadomasochistic sex paraphernalia.
"Here is someone who needed to be removed from the streets, and removed quickly," said Bergen County prosecutor William Schmidt
Now I am just amazed. Thank God Kid bailed already because he would so act like a little girl again now that I just added to a news story with another news stroy. Heavens to Betsy no, what shall we do?
I say we wait for his conviction, bring him out behind the court house and just beat his silly ass within an inch of his miserable life.