A few minutes after 6 a.m. Wednesday, the driver of a black sport utility vehicle called 911 from his cellphone to report that he had just hit someone on 108th Street in Corona, Queens.
He went back to the spot. But there was no body there.
At 7:05 a.m. in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, the driver of a red van noticed a pedestrian trying to flag him down, yelling that he was dragging something. He pulled over and made a gruesome find: The body of a man — hooked through his sternum — was affixed to a steel plate that was part of the van’s undercarriage.
The man had apparently been hit by the first car and then dragged by the second one through major arteries of Queens and Brooklyn: the Long Island Expressway, the Grand Central Parkway, the Van Wyck Expressway, the Belt Parkway and Ocean Parkway.
It was 19.8 miles in all — and more than 50 minutes — before the van dragging the torn-up corpse finally came to a stop at Coney Island Avenue and Brighton 10th Street.
No one could say on Wednesday whether the man was killed when he was struck by the S.U.V. in Queens or whether he died later; an autopsy is scheduled for Thursday.
The police said the victim was a Hispanic man in his late 20s to early 30s, between 5-foot-2 and 5-foot-4. He had injuries from his heels to the back of his head. The body tissue, including the back of the legs, buttocks and back were, “worn, basically, off, in the extreme,” said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.
In the man’s pants was a business card that investigators did not believe belonged to him; a broken iPhone with numbers that might provide clues to his identity; and a Western Union receipt showing that money had been wired overseas. His shoes were missing. A waist-length blue vinyl jacket was found in the westbound lanes of the Belt Parkway, near the Flatbush Avenue exit, and is believed to be his because of damage to its back and because the victim’s body was found without one.
No one has been charged with a crime; the first driver, Gustavo Acosta, of 80th Street in Jackson Heights, apparently broke no laws, and the second, Manuel G. Lituma, who lives a few blocks from where the man was hit, did not know his car had snared the body, the police said.
Mr. Lituma even stopped the car twice, once in Corona and once in Brighton Beach, to check whether anything was wrong, but did not notice the body until he was flagged down. “He apparently felt something,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said. “The car was not driving in a normal fashion.”
It was still dark at 6:12 a.m. when Mr. Acosta, 29, on his way down 108th Street to work, passed through the green light at 51st Avenue, saw the man in the middle of the two southbound lanes 75 feet south of the crosswalk and swerved to try to avoid him, but could not.
He stopped immediately and dialed 911, and then went back and found that there was no body. Officers who arrived inspected his vehicle. “There’s no damage, there’s no body,” Mr. Browne said. “So he concludes he was mistaken.”
But police said surveillance video captured what had happened. Mr. Acosta’s Ford S.U.V. hit the man “pretty hard” and then ran over his body, Mr. Browne said. The video, which was not released, shows another car right behind Mr. Acosta’s pulling over.
Then Mr. Lituma’s 1998 Chevrolet 1500 appears on the video, and moves directly over the body. When the van moves away, Mr. Browne said, “there’s no body there.” Mr. Lituma, 51, told the police that he saw cars ahead of him swerving, but believed they were trying to avoid a pothole.
Some Brighton Beach residents who saw Mr. Lituma’s van shortly after it stopped said they were horrified to see a body underneath the front, with the victim’s head and shoulders visible. The driver appeared both tired and shocked, said one resident, David Steinberg.
On 108th Street in Corona, there was almost no sign that anything had happened, save for some ashes from extinguished police flares. “I don’t believe it,” said Joe Palmieri, 71, a retired sanitation worker spending time at a social club nearby. “How can you not feel a body under the car if you hit someone and hook them and drive off?”
At Mr. Lituma’s home in Queens, a man who identified himself as his roommate, Daniel Ortiz, said Mr. Lituma had lived there for several years and was a native of Ecuador. “He is a good person, he’s a hard worker, does construction,” Mr. Ortiz said. “He doesn’t want to talk right now.”
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