NYC cab
New York City Police officers investigate a taxi cab that jumped a curb and hit several pedestrians in New York's Rockefeller Center, August 20, 2013. A British tourist was severely injured in the incident. Reuters

The foot of a young British tourist was severed on Tuesday when an out-of-control New York City cab hit her while trying to avoid crashing into a cyclist, reports said.

The incident happened shortly after 11 a.m. local time near Rockefeller Center, and according to reports, the cab driver hit the cyclist before jumping the curb and crashing into the woman who was eating a hotdog on Sixth Avenue and 49th Street.

Sian Green, the 23-year-old British tourist who landed in New York on Monday, was immediately given first-aid treatment by passers-by. David Justino, a plumber, was quick to fashion a tourniquet for the woman's leg while Max Crespo, who owns a pizza truck at the intersection, said he immediately put the severed foot in a bucket of ice.

“He hit the girl, she flew up in the air, her leg was severed right off ... so I just grabbed my belt, went over, lifted her up, put it on, held it,” Justino told NBC New York, and added that he was amazed at her mental strength throughout the ordeal.

“Her left leg was severed off, the other was mangled,” he told New York Daily News, adding that she was a strong and brave girl. “She was conscious the whole time, the poor thing. I wished she would have passed out.”

Green was soon taken to Bellevue Hospital, and her condition was not immediately revealed. But, sources told the New York Daily News that doctors were trying to reattach her foot, but her right leg below the knee could not be saved.

It was not immediately known how many pedestrians were injured in the crash.

According to reports, the driver of the cab, 24-year-old Faysal Kabir Mohammad Himon of Queens, was issued a summons for being an unauthorized driver and set free. Detailing the incident, the cyclist said that Himon was trying to make a left turn as the cyclist passed him.

“I told him to stop because I’m trying to go forward and people are crossing,” the cyclist was quoted as saying by the New York Daily News. “He loses his patience. He gets angry. He accelerates. Hits me.”