The New York Daily News (June 16) can make fun of the "pants-less pervert" all it wants. But the fact is that our heroic men and women in uniform are in the killing fields of Iraq to protect the American way of life that allows such behavior. A case can be made that we have a responsibility to act like morons on the streets and highways of America, so that 2,500 servicemen will not have died in vain.

The Brooklyn cab driver killed when a pants-less pervert rammed a van into his taxi had only worked the late shift once before Wednesday night's fatal wreck, his family said yesterday.

"He worked so hard to support his family," said Luis Jativa's brother, Jimmy, 36, of Charlotte, N.C. "Our family is brokenhearted. I loved my brother very much."

Luis Jativa, 35, an Ecuadoran immigrant, took his livery cab to a mechanic Wednesday morning and decided to work that night because because he couldn't afford to take a day off.

Jativa sent much of the money he earned back to Ecuador to support his wife and two sons, a 4-year-old and 8-month-old.

He was driving east on 48th St. in Borough Park about 8:45 p.m. when a van driven by George Boos slammed into his car, police said.

Minutes before, two women saw Boos, who was not wearing pants, exposing himself at 46thSt. and Ninth Ave., police said.

The women called cops, and when they arrived the 58-year-old Queens man, who has at least seven prior arrests involving public lewdness, jumped into his van and fled, police said.

Two blocks later, he allegedly blew through a red light and hit Jativa's taxi. Jativa was taken to nearby Maimonides Medical Center, where he died.

Boos, who told cops he lived at a homeless shelter in Long Island City, was in stable condition at Lutheran Medical Center. He was charged with second-degree manslaughter, unlawful dealing with fireworks, public lewdness and driving while impaired.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly called Jativa's death a tragedy and denied that cops, who had the witnesses in their squad car, were chasing Boos at the time of the fatal wreck. "It certainly was not a classic police chase in my mind," Kelly said. "It was following."

Funeral arrangements were pending for Jativa, a soccer coach who was looking forward to his country's World Cup match yesterday versus Costa Rica. Ecuador won 3-0.

Fellow cabbies were pooling money to help send his body back to South America for burial. He recently visited his wife and kids there before returning to Brooklyn two weeks ago.

His brother, a former cabbie, said: "I hated that job. I told him to quit, but he wouldn't."

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