Burning smell fails to tip off driver who drags man 20 miles underneath van

An SUV driver slammed into a pedestrian in Queens Wednesday and then a passing van driver hit the body again and dragged it an incredible 20 miles to Brooklyn, police said.
The corpse's gruesome journey began when the man was hit while trying to cross 108th St. in Corona and did not end until the van driver finally noticed the body in Brighton Beach, police said.
Thinking he smelled something burning, the cargo van's driver pulled over once along the way, but did not discover the body until other motorists flagged him down on Brighton 10th Terrace an hour later, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
"People were signaling him to stop the vehicle," Kelly said. "That's when the body is discovered under his car."
Investigators believe the dead man - whose body was too mangled to immediately identify - was trying to cross 108th St. near 51st Ave., when an SUV driver ran him down just after 6 a.m.
A maroon Chevy van was a few cars behind the SUV and its driver later told detectives he noticed that other vehicles were swerving to avoid something in the road, police sources said.
The van's driver, identified by sources as Manuel Gaspar Lituma Sanchez of Corona, thought they were trying to avoid a pothole and kept driving straight ahead - inadvertently picking up the body.
Investigators believe the body got stuck in the van's chassis, so when the driver of the SUV pulled over to call 911 that he hit someone, the victim had already vanished.
Oblivious to the body underneath his van, Sanchez got on the Grand Central Parkway a few blocks away and then drove south on the Van Wyck Expressway and west on the Belt Parkway before exiting in Brighton Beach.
"Oh my God, how could a body be dragged that far?," exclaimed Maria Diaz, 46. "That's terrible."
Detectives were quizzing both drivers, but no charges are expected, police sources said. Detectives think the man was already dead before he got stuck under the van.
Investigators were going to retrace the van's route to look for body parts and articles of clothing, police said.
"I don't believe it," said Joe Palmeri, 71, of Whitestone. "How could you not feel a body under your car driving that far? Just the initial hit you had to feel, right?"

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/02/11/2009-02-11_burning_smell_fails_to_tip_off_driver_wh.html