By Georgina Brennan

The man accused of killing Queens native Donald Hennessy, 76, in a deadly hit and run in March has pleaded guilty.

Just before St. Patrick’s Day Hennessy, a retired bartender, was crossing the intersection of 56th Street and 31st Avenue in Woodside after picking up a cup of coffee and the Sunday newspapers when Royce Quigua, 30, came speeding through the intersection and hit him.

Hennessy, neighbours told reporters, had lived with his wife and daughter on the third floor of a garden apartment building at 56-05 31st Avenue, just a few short steps away from where he died seconds after hitting the ground.

Quigua was speeding in the road because he was trying to evade a police officer who had stopped him for talking on his cell phone while driving.

“The officer was walking toward the car and then the guy just took off,” a police official said.

Speeding down the road in a red 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse, Quigua hit Hennessy and fled later abandoning the car at a garage.

Quigua will be sentenced to 18 to 42 months in prison when his trial comes up for sentencing in January.

“The defendant has admitted that he recklessly drove an automobile at a high rate of speed in the wrong lane of traffic. The result of his actions was the untimely death of a devoted husband, father and grandfather. The defendant has now been held accountable for his crime and will serve serious prison time, giving him time to reflect on his misdeed,” the Queens district attorney’s office said.

Hennessy’s son, James, president of the Long Beach, Long Island, City Council who is also a volunteer firefighter, who also teaches special education and history told the Irish Voice in March that he hoped his father was at peace.

“My dad was a very forgiving person. He had always said that this was the sunset of his life,” James said.