A female hit-and-run driver who plowed into seven pedestrians in Midtown Manhattan late on Sunday night has been pictured entering court wearing a ‘good vibes’ t-shirt. 

Imani Lucas, 29, is charged with attempted murder after reportedly closing her eyes and praying as she ran a red light on the crosswalk between West 36th Street and 6th Avenue in her Honda Accord at 11.55pm, leaving a bloody scene in her wake. 

Lucas, from Belle Mead, New Jersey, was flanked by three cops Tuesday morning as she entered a Manhattan courthouse looking disheveled in handcuffs and a gray t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan: ‘good vibes’. 

Her mother said she takes medication for bipolar disorder and was ‘hearing voices’ while seeming to suffer a manic episode at the time of the crash.

Lucas underwent a psychiatric evaluation before being charged with seven counts of attempted murder, seven counts of assault, reckless endangerment, leaving the scene of an accident with serious injuries, and reckless driving.

Gruesome images from the aftermath of the crash show many of the victims – six men and one woman ranging in age from 24 to 61 – sprawled on the ground unconscious and covered in blood.  

Lucas continued driving for around another 13 miles via the Midtown Tunnel before she crashed into two vehicles off the Long Island Expressway at Clearview, Queens. 

Miraculously, each of the pedestrians and other motorists impacted by her rampage are expected to survive – though some suffered horrific injuries ranging from leg fractures to spinal cord damage requiring five hours of surgery. 

The motorist’s mother, Melissa Lucas, said her daughter suffers from bipolar disorder and was ‘hearing voices’ in the moments before she crashed. 

‘She is on medication, and as far as we knew she was taking her medication,’ Melissa Lucas told Gothamist. 

‘This episode coming on all of a sudden, I don’t know what to think or what precipitated it.’ 

‘Imani would never do anything intentionally to hurt anybody or anything,’ she added. ‘Nothing like this has happened before.’

Melissa said she had been on vacation with her husband when she got a call from her daughter late Sunday night. 

‘She said she was hearing voices… I asked her, I said: “Imani, where are you?”‘ Melissa recalled. 

‘She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know where she was going. She said, ‘I’m just driving. I’m just driving.

‘And I said, ‘Where are you?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ And then that’s when I think I heard a police officer coming up to her talking, and then I heard something like Bayside, Queens.’ 

Lucas told detectives she closed her eyes and prayed to God in the moments before the crosswalk crash, according to Abc7.  

Photographs which emerged in the immediate aftermath show the front of Lucas’ Honda completely crumpled by the impact of the collision in Queens – and new images released on Tuesday show her in transit moments before.

CCTV images also show Lucas hurtling down the highway towards pedestrians at the crossing.  

Witness photographs caught moments later show the grisly impact of what police believe was an attempt to murder seven innocent pedestrians. 

Cops said they were mainly New Yorkers, with one or two tourists involved – reportedly from Italy. 

An alarmed employee from a nearby Taco Bell leapt into action after he saw what happened. 

He said each of the pedestrians appeared unresponsive when he first rushed out onto the street. Many were flung between bin bags near the sidewalk, photographs show.

‘I took them water and tissue to clean everything. It was a very dangerous accident,’ the Taco Bell staffer told Pix11 moments after the crash.

Footage of the scene shows people stepping between their bodies as they tried to check their vital signs, with one man on the phone to emergency services.

NYPD has so far identified the victims as six men aged 24, 27, 28, 30, 32 and 61, along with a 34-year-old woman. 

They were taken to area hospitals with the exception of the 30-year-old man who refused to go, cops said.

Their injuries range from ‘general complaint of distress to a fractured leg’.

A date for Lucas’ court appearance has not yet been confirmed as she continues to undergo psychiatric evaluation. 

Two of the pedestrians have been named by Italian English outlet La Voce di New York as Italian tourists Giulia Gardini, 34, and Matteo Maj, 51.

Gardani, a tennis instructor, from Piacenza just outside Milan, was left in a critical condition after the impact left her with a cervical spine injury requiring five hours of surgery.

Maj, a graphic designer, needed surgery for a tibia and fibula procedure, according to the paper, who spoke with his sister Monica Maj. 

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