NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A 60-year-old woman who was knocked to the ground by a purse thief in a Queens parking lot in April and left fighting for her life has died.
Caroline Bonacci had just shopped at Key Food on 73rd Avenue by 215th Street in Oakland Gardens on April 13 when a man in a car yanked her purse from her, knocking her to the pavement, police told the Daily News.
Bonacci, who used a cane, was putting groceries into her car when the robber drove by and grabbed her purse. The impact led Bonacci to fall and hit her head.
She was initially taken to Long Island Jewish Medical Center. Bonacci cycled between the hospital and a nursing home, but her friends told the paper that she never quite recovered.
"She was hospitalized for a while," Henry Brewer, a lifelong friend, told the outlet. "Whenever we visited her, she was asleep. So we would leave cards and messages and notes just to say that we were there ... we were thinking of her and she remained in our prayers and thoughts."
Police arrested Paul Wiesner, 56, and charged him with robbery, assault, grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and reckless driving.
It wasn't immediately clear if those charges would be upgraded following her Oct. 22 death.
"She was someone who mattered," Melissa Keras-Donaghy, a Westchester physical therapist and a friend of Bonacci's for over 30 years, told the Daily News. "She had friends and people who cared about her."
Bonacci, who graduated from Queens College, worked at various companies as a claims adjuster with a specialty in workers' compensation cases. She retired in 2021.
Brewer, president and director of Levittown's Ivy Lane Players, told the outlet that Bonacci was the house manager for their theater group.
"She was well known in regional theater in the city and Long Island," Brewer said. "We were friends for over 40 years. We go back to college."
Despite the fact that Bonacci has no immediate family or parents to mourn her death, her wake Tuesday is expected to be filled with friends, colleagues and people from her neighborhood.
He said her parents both died within the past five years, and her sister passed away in 2021.
"It's very sad, the circumstances under which she passed," Brewer said. "It was very difficult."
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