A little boy named after the Man of Steel watched his mom get mowed down on the Fourth of July by an alleged drunk driver on the Lower East Side — and desperately tried to save his real-life hero at the horrific scene, his grandmother told The Post.
Six-year-old Kal-El Ruiz now spends every night longing for his mom, Emily Ruiz, 30, who was one of four people killed when substance abuse counselor Daniel Hyden allegedly slammed his car into them at Corlears Hook Park off Water Street.
“He said yesterday that he wished that heaven would bring her back to life,” said Liliana Ruiz, the boy’s grandma. “His mom was his hero. He looked up to her so much.”
Kal-El — Superman’s name on his home planet Krypton — was begging his family to leave the party because he was tired, but they decided to stay a bit longer to light sparklers.
Less than a half hour later Hyden, 44, who wrote a book called “The Sober Addict,” allegedly plowed into the crowd and crushed Emily Ruiz under the weight of his two-ton truck.
“It sounded like an explosion,” Liliana Ruiz recalled this week, sitting in the same park four days before her daughter’s funeral on Sunday. “I think everyone who was here was thinking the same thing — that it was some sort of big firework that exploded.”
But then she heard the terrible screams.
“I was saying ‘Emily, Emily’ and her eyes were like saucers and her lips started turning purple,” she said, explaining that she ran to her daughter’s side. “I was like, ‘Am I watching my daughter die right in front of me?’”
“I hope the last face she saw was mine or at least one of them,” she said through tears.
As rescue workers tried in vain to lift the truck off Emily Ruiz, Kal-El ran inside the apartment they share with her aunt across from the park to get his first aid kit.
“He said, ‘I’m going to get bandages for mom’ and he took the first aid kit that his mom had for him,” Liliana Ruiz recalled, sobbing as she spoke.
“‘My mom is a great person and I don’t want her to die,’” she said her grandson told her.
Emily Ruiz was rushed to Bellevue and died four days later when she was taken off life support.
“I didn’t want to leave her side,” Liliana Ruiz recalled. “It was still her body, still her face, still her hand that I was holding. I wanted to stay with her.”
Her daughter’s heart, lung and kidneys helped save the lives of four people — in New York and Florida –who were in need of transplants, said LiveOnNY CEO Leonard Achan.
The boy, who starts first grade in the fall, has his grandma to thank for his name.
“I’m the big Superman fan,” said Liliana Ruiz, adding she’s seen the movies hundreds of times. “She honored me in that way.”
Liliana Ruiz, who works at The Henry Street Settlement, a social service agency, is now trying to get custody of Kal-El and hoping to leave the apartment across from the park.
“I just don’t want to live here across the street from this,” she said, adding that she hopes to remain in the area. “It was my daughter’s demise and I don’t want to live in front of it.”
Liliana Ruiz now tries to avoid the park when she’s with Kal-El.
“I had to first explain to him what a drunk person is and why they’re not supposed to drive,” she said. “So once he understood that he was like, ‘Why would he do that?’”
