Driver of NYPD SUV strikes man crossing Brooklyn street

The driver of an NYPD SUV struck and injured a man carrying groceries across a Brooklyn street Tuesday, police sources said.

The 59-year-old victim was hit by a marked NYPD vehicle about 3:20 p.m. as he crossed 86th St. between Bay 31st and Bay 32nd Sts., the sources said.

The police vehicle had its lights and sirens going, and was responding to a robbery, an NYPD spokesman said.

The man appeared to have crossed mid-block, police sources said; the nearest crosswalks and traffic lights on 86th St. is a block-and-a-half away in either direction, at Bay 33rd St. to the south, or Bay Parkway to the north.

“He was on the floor, bleeding from his head. Someone put a little pillow under his head but he wasn’t moving,” said one witness, a cell phone store worker who didn’t give her name. “He wasn’t conscious… It was pretty grim.”

Medics took the man to Lutheran Hospital in stable condition, cops said.

The man’s groceries and produce was still strewn on the ground at the bloody Bensonhurst scene Tuesday evening.

The crash comes less than two weeks after an officer in an NYPD van plowed into Ronald Smith, 53, on April 7, killing him as he was panhandling on Eastern Parkway near Schenectady Ave. in Crown Heights.

A witness told the Daily News said the driver tried to beat the light and wound up dragging the victim about 35 feet.

The officer driving the van, who has not been named, has been placed on modified duty, working a desk assignment without a shield or gun as the state Attorney General investigates the crash.