Brooklyn mom spends Thanksgiving alone and grieving after son killed by hit-and-run FedEx driver

A Brooklyn mother spent Thanksgiving alone and grieving after a FedEx driver struck and killed her son days before the holiday then took off.

“I always thought my kids would be burying me,” said Diana McDonald, the man’s mother. “I never thought I would be burying my youngest son,”

Michael McDonald, 47, was killed Nov. 9 when the driver of a FedEx tractor-trailer hit him as they made a right turn off Caton Ave. onto Coney Island Ave. in Windsor Terrace around 9:20 p.m., police said.

The truck dragged him until his body became dislodged from the truck. The driver of a Kia Forte making the same right turn then ran McDonald over again.

Medics rushed the pedestrian to an area hospital, but he could not be saved.

The shaken 25-year-old driver of the Kia remained at the scene, but the FedEx driver did not. They are still being sought.

McDonald was the younger of his mother’s two sons and was moving back in with her after a breakup.

“The day of the accident he had just finished getting settled he was happy to be back home,” Diana McDonald recalled. “That morning we had coffee and had breakfast. Then we watched television and at around four he left and he didn’t come back.”

When she hadn’t heard from him the next day, the woman began to worry.

“I called my granddaughter and asked if he had passed by and she said no,” she said. “It wasn’t like him but I kept calling his phone and he wouldn’t answer.”

McDonald called her son repeatedly for days, but he never picked up.

“I waited Friday and Saturday and still I kept calling his phone,”Diana McDonald said. “Finally, I called the police and they started asking me a lot of questions and eventually I was told there was no arrest.”

Until then, her son had been listed as a John Doe.

“Ten minutes later, the door bell rang and they told me what happened. I got so numb, I was in shock I couldn’t believe it.”

The heartbroken mother recounted their final afternoon together, when she cooked her son one of his favorite meals and the two drank coffee and watched television.

“He told me he had not eaten this in years and when he came back he was going to eat some more,”she said in between sobs. “But he didn’t.”

Diana McDonald is struggling to come to terms with her son’s death as the holidays roll around.

“I know life has to go on but it won’t be easy,” she said. “We were planning what to have on Thanksgiving and now my house is empty and I’m alone.”

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“This has to be the worst Thanksgiving, this is my first year not celebrating,” she added.

Officers working on the case dropped by to give her some updated information and to bring her a turkey for the holiday. There have been no arrests.

“I miss him so much already,” she said of her son. “Michael would call me every other day and would come often to see me.”

McDonald worked in construction and had two children — a 12-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy.

“He always had a smile on his face and he loved his job as a construction worker, he loved what he did,” his mother said. “He loved lifting weights and he loved his kids.”

The man’s funeral arrangements are scheduled for Dec. 2 at Harmony Funeral Home in Flatbush.

“What can you do? You cannot run from it when it’s your time you have to go,” Diana McDonald said. “No one knows our destination, the hour or when it will come.”