An out-of-control BMW with a drunken driver behind the wheel hopped a curb and plowed into a group of young clubgoers in Queens early Sunday, police said.
Six people were hit but escaped life-threatening injuries - two of them by falling backwards into a construction hole, allowing the car to pass overhead.
"It was scary," said Deborah Caceres, 18, who suffered a nasty gash on her head. "You see the car coming and you don't know how to react."
The speeding BMW slammed into a FDNY call box at the corner of Steinway St. and Northern Blvd. in Astoria at 4:30 a.m. and spun wildly into a group of partyers who had just stepped out of the El Noa Noa discotheque.
"I remember trying to run but the car was speeding a lot," Caceres said. "The car came on the sidewalk and hit everyone."
Two of Caceres' friends who were directly in the car's path fell into the hole, likely saving their lives.
"They said we were very lucky," said Caceres, of Staten Island, after her gash was closed by a dozen staples at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell. Her friends also only suffered a few bruises and broken bones, she said.
When the BMW finally came to rest against a concrete wall, its driver, 24-year-old Renis Kuci, staggered out of the smashed vehicle and started weeping, witnesses said.
"He didn't even hit the brakes - all I heard was a bunch of screaming and the car jumped the curb," said witness Luis Lorenzana, 32.
"He looked like he was disoriented [and] he was stumbling out of the car," said Lorenzana, who said Kuci told police "I don't know what I did."
Kuci, of Woodhaven, was charged with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, refusing to take a Breathalyzer test and reckless driving, police said.
He kissed his girlfriend goodbye before being led away in handcuffs, witnesses said.
"I still cannot believe he's in jail," said Kuci's mother, who asked that her name not be used. She said that her son called her from the 114th Precinct station house shortly after the accident.
"I'm so sorry, mama, I'm in jail [and] I wish to be [dead]," Kuci told his mother, who cried as she apologized to the victims her son hit.
