Deliveryman clings to life following hit-and-run incident, driver son of dead Madoff investor: cops

BY Bob Kappstatter and Jonathan Lemire
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Originally Published:Saturday, January 29th 2011, 4:00 AM
Updated: Sunday, January 30th 2011, 12:13 AM
A delivery man was badly injured by a Lexus last night.
Santos for News
A delivery man was badly injured by a Lexus last night.
Ricardo Gonzalez
Ricardo Gonzalez

The boozed-up son of one of Bernie Madoff's original investors was busted for smashing into a bicycling deliveryman in midtown - and then trying to speed off, police said Saturday.

Clark Gettinger, 40, first smacked into a taxi cab at W.42nd St. as he drove a 2001 Lexus northbound on Eighth Ave. before plowing into the bicyclist from behind near W.47th St. at 10:15 p.m. Friday, prosecutors said.

The food deliveryman, Ricardo Gonzalez, fell from his bike and slid under a silver BMW sport-utility vehicle.

Gonzalez, 27, was bleeding heavily from the head as he lay unconscious in the street but Gettinger never slowed down, witnesses told police.

Gettinger - the son of the late Robert Gettinger, an investor who lost millions in Madoff's Ponzi scheme - was pulled over by police several blocks away. Gettinger refused to take a Breathalyzer test, police sources said.

He pleaded not guilty last night to charges that include DWI, assault and leaving the scene of an accident. He was being held in lieu of $25,000 bail and $500,000 bond.

Gonzalez, who lives in Inwood, was in critical condition at Bellevue Hospital.

"They have him in a coma," said his brother, Jose Gonzalez, 24. "He couldn't speak to anyone."

Ricardo Gonzalez, who works at the Cosmic Diner on Eighth Ave., was weary of the city and hoped to rejoin his wife and their three children in Veracruz, Mexico.

"He always worked hard," said fellow diner employee Manuel Vargas, 26. "It sucks when you hear someone was drinking and driving and made someone's life miserable."

But with jobs scarce in Veracruz, he kept working in order to send money back to his family, his brother said.

"He is the kind of person who just went from his job to his house," said Jose Gonzalez, who raged against Clark Gettinger. "They should punish him."

The suspect's father, who died in 2009, was one of Madoff's first investors, initially entrusting the fraud king with cash in 1973.

When the notorious Ponzi scheme was exposed in 2008, the elder Gettinger said he lost $13 million - including a $3 million trust fund for his two sons - to the con man.

With Corinne Lestch, Erica Pearson and Clare Trapasso

mlysiak@nydailynews.com