Family of Mexican immigrant killed in Brooklyn hit-and-run mourns

A hard-working Mexican immigrant was struck and killed by a ruthless hit-and-run driver near a Brooklyn intersection last week — leaving the man dead the same way his father did four decades earlier.

According to the NYPD, Felix Mendez, 49, of Lafayette Avenue, was walking through the intersection of Lafayette and Bedford Avenue around 3 a.m. Thursday when he was struck by a car.

Instead of stopping, police said, the driver drove north toward Bedford, leaving behind a critically injured Mendez.

He was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in critical condition and was later pronounced dead.

Mendez’s 45-year-old friend and neighbor, Alejandro Flores, told The Post that his friend died in the same manner as his father, who was killed in a hit-and-run in Mexico 40 years ago.

“His father was riding a bike and died due to drunk driving,” Flores said of Mendez, who was just 8 years old at the time. “Somebody came to her house and said to her mother, ‘Your husband has died on the road.’

“He always remembered that,” Flores added. “Now it’s the same for him. It is very sad.”

The victim’s 40-year-old nephew, Francisco Mendez, said he had already told his uncle’s four siblings, who live in Mexico, and his son, Leonardo, who lives in California, about her passing.

“Leonardo, he is 22 years old. He started crying. He can’t talk, he’s crying,” said Francisco Mendez. “They talked very regularly. They never went more than two weeks apart. They’re very close. Felix died a long time ago (from the mother). They were separated, but he always takes care of his son.

Flores said he and Felix Méndez became close while working at a restaurant on Broad Street in the late 2000s — “I gave him that job, we were the only Mexicans here,” he said.

Felix Mendez, who came to the United States around 1999, was raising money to build a house in Puebla, Mexico, on which he had been working for the past three years.

Ultimately, Flores said, he wanted to go back to Mexico and become a pig farmer. But work was going slowly, as Félix Méndez was often withdrawing money to send his son out west.

“Everybody’s dream is to do this: make money and create for themselves,” Flores said. “And he did it! The only delay he had was the money he was sending to his son. …He stopped building the house only when he had to send this money.”

Flores remembered Felix Mendez as an incredibly hard worker who spent many long hours and late nights at his two restaurant jobs.

But he also tried to keep himself fit and hit the track three days a week, no matter what he was doing the night before.

Flores said, “Felix worked very, very hard – he never stopped working.” “Even after working late at night, he would wake up at 7 in the morning and run on the nearby track.”

Both hoped to one day run the New York City Marathon.

“The marathon passes right here, and every year we sit here and say, ‘We’re going to do this,'” Flores said. “But the time is coming, and we are working seven days a week and we are not getting time to train. So we’ve been saying we want to do that, but we haven’t done it.”

Nephew Francisco Mendez said they were trying to send his uncle’s body home to Puebla. But raising enough money to do so has been difficult.

“We’re just doing it through people we know, $5 here, $10 there,” he said. “It is very difficult.”