A 7-year-old boy was fatally struck by an NYPD tow truck as he rode a scooter alongside his mother on his way to school in Brooklyn Thursday morning, cops said. 

Little Kamari Hughes and his mom were crossing Myrtle Avenue at the North Portland Avenue intersection – just outside Fort Greene Park – around 7:50 a.m. when the truck hit the scooter-riding boy, causing him to fall to the ground, according to authorities and the child’s grandfather.

“I just held him in my arms yesterday,” grieving grandpa Derrick Vaughn, 58, told The Post on Thursday afternoon, as he held a large stack of blue and red balloons near the corner where the deadly collision happened. 

Heartbreaking video of the aftermath of the crash showed Kamari’s shocked mother sitting in the crosswalk next to her only child’s little body, which was covered in a white sheet, as investigators crouched down to speak to her and bystanders looked on from the sidewalk behind crime scene tape.

“You hit my child!” the mom first yelled out at the driver, a civilian employee of the NYPD, who “got out for a second to look, to see what she did, and then got back in the car,” said witness Marlo Stevens, 50, who lives and works in Fort Greene.

“And then, when the mother realized the child was not moving she said, ‘You killed my child!’” recalled Stevens. 

The driver of the NYPD vehicle was making a right turn onto North Portland Avenue and hit the child while passing the crosswalk, police said.

“When you saw that little baby’s skull… that was heart-wrenching,” witness Antwoan Hayes, 40, from Coney Island, who was taking his two kids, 2 and 6, to school, said of the harrowing scene.

NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey told reporters the tow truck driver stopped immediately – but both Hayes and Stevens said the motorist first tried to drive off before bystanders stopped her.

“The lady kept going. She kept moving. She kept going nine cars down, and two people jumped out in front of her vehicle,” Hayes said.

“That’s when she noticed and stopped,” he recounted. “Everyone had to stop her and jump out in front of her vehicle for her to stop.”

EMS workers pronounced the child dead at the scene.

The driver, who had a vehicle on the hitch of the truck, was heading to the Brooklyn tow pound at the time of the incident, Maddrey said.  She did not immediately face any charges.

“Everybody was screaming at the driver, as you can imagine, and then they just put her in the car and drove off,” said another witness, Jose Santiago, an electric and construction worker, referring to responding cops. “They didn’t put cuffs on her or anything. They just told her to ‘hurry up and get in.’ There were a lot of people irate as you can imagine.”

Vaughn described his daughter as “really not OK” after witnessing the end of her son’s life, adding that she was at home waiting for her husband to return from a trip upstate.

“She can’t come back through [Fort Greene Park anymore],” he said. “She used to walk him to school every day.” 

In addition to walking her son to school, the mom was also pushing another child that she had been babysitting in a stroller at the time of the tragic crash, Vaughn said. 

The granddad said that he hadn’t “been there for [Kamari] since he was born,” but he came back into the family picture in 2021, and ever since then “it’s been me and [Kamari].”

“He was amazing at math at 7 years old, loved doing division, loved school,” Vaughn said of his grandson. “He was a very outdoor dude – he liked to do flips, sports, basketball and anything daredevil.” 

“If you met him, you’d love him,” the grieving grandfather added. Mayor Eric Adams, at a late-morning press conference, said the deadly crash was “heart-wrenching for all of us.”

“No parent wants to start their day losing a loved one to any form of incident,” he said.

The NYPD’s Collision Investigation Squad is probing the deadly incident. 

Maddrey, who was at the site of the tragedy, said the boy’s teachers were there too. 

“My heart goes out to the family of that young boy and his mother and the school teachers who were also on the scene,” he told reporters. “It was a very tough scene to be at this morning.”

Latoya Franklin, 42, a close friend of the Hughes family, said that Kamari’s mother was “not doing great at all” after the deadly incident. 

“She’s going in and out,” Franklin added. “She’s a loving mom, a hard worker and this was her only child.”

Franklin said that her own two daughters went to daycare, and later, pre-school with Kamari – and they often went to the park and played together.

“He was such a happy neighborhood child that was just always happy and full of life,” Franklin recalled. “That’s all there is to it. It’s a huge loss.”

Hours after the crash, neighbors had left several candles and bouquets of flowers at the Fort Greene intersection in memory of the young boy. At a late afternoon memorial, a group released blue and red balloons in his memory.

Jonnelle Louis, 31, held her 9-year-old daughter’s hand as they lit a candle at the corner.

She said she recalled often seeing the boy and his mother in the mornings while taking her own daughter to school. 

“His mom is a loving, capable woman and right now she is grieving. She just wants to be alone,” Louis said. “His mom would go to his school and bring him back and everything.”

Louis described the neighborhood as a close-knit community where usually, “nothing bad happens.”

“This community is a family over here,” she added. “We are all grieving.”

Reflecting on the tragedy, she said, “it could’ve been mine,” in reference to her own daughter.

The non-profit organization Transportation Alternatives mourned the boy’s death and said the city hasn’t been doing enough to prevent such tragedies.

“We are furious to hear that the driver of an NYPD tow truck struck and killed a 7-year-old boy today,” the organization said in a statement. “No parent should have to bury their own child, and this devastating crash robbed this boy of the future he deserved to have.

“Every single crash is preventable,” the statement continued. “We know how to make our streets safe for everyone, especially the youngest New Yorkers.

“New Yorkers have had enough with this administration’s excuses on street safety. How many more children have to die before Mayor Adams takes action?”

The crash happened just blocks from the fatal hit-and-run that killed 3-month-old Apolline Mong Guillemin and left her mother seriously injured in Clinton Hill on Sept. 11, 2021.

Motorist Tyrik Mott had been driving the wrong way down Gates Avenue when he blew a red light and collided with another car on Vanderbilt Avenue, killing the baby being pushed in a stroller by her mom on the sidewalk, cops said at the time.

Mott, 30, who previously racked up 160 traffic violations, then bolted the scene and attempted to carjack another vehicle before he was caught by police officers, according to prosecutors.

He was sentenced to nine years behind bars over the summer.