Streetsblog New York City

A DOT employee who crushed a Manhattan pedestrian with a dump truck and left the scene was not charged with a crime, was cleared of all traffic violations, and remains on the payroll.

It is unknown whether Harry Robinson is still driving vehicles for DOT, as the agency would not discuss details of his employment due to a pending civil case.

Roxana Sorina Buta. Photo via DNAinfo

Robinson, 64, was found not guilty in traffic court on May 9 of failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care in the killing of Roxana Buta, according to DMV records.

At approximately 1:30 a.m. on May 24, 2012, as Buta crossed Broadway at 14th Street, in the crosswalk and with the light, Robinson made a right turn, ran her over and kept going.

An aspiring actress, Buta was on her way home to East Harlem from the restaurant where she worked. She was 21.

Last June it was reported that Buta’s killer had been identified. Though Robinson’s name was not released, the attorney hired by Buta’s family said police confirmed that the driver worked for DOT. Streetsblog contacted DOT last year to verify that the driver was an agency employee and, if so, whether the driver continued to operate DOT vehicles on the job, but received no response.

DOT told us this week that Robinson has worked as a highway repair worker since 2000. A spokesperson said that, due to pending litigation, the agency was prohibited from answering specific questions, including whether internal protocols or contract rules govern the disciplining or firing of DOT employees. Buta’s family has filed a civil suit claiming negligence on the part of Robinson, DOT, the Department of Design and Construction, and Mack Trucks.

A Department of Sanitation spokesperson told Streetsblog that agency is guided by internal policies in dealing with employees who are involved in serious crashes while on the job, but did not elaborate on what those policies are. We have also reached out to the Parks Department.

The Post reports that Robinson took the corner “at an unknown speed.” Also unknown: what steps, if any, NYPD and District Attorney Cy Vance took to measure Robinson’s speed, a factor that would have determined whether Buta lived or died. But police did say Buta was talking on a cell phone and had a blood alcohol level of .06, which is perfectly legal while walking.

Robinson was reportedly excused from prosecution because authorities could not prove he knew he had run Buta over. If this is true — Vance’s office does not discuss vehicular crimes cases, even when no charges are filed — it would mean leaving the scene was the only charge considered.

Buta was one of at least 37 pedestrians and cyclists killed by hit-and-run drivers in NYC since January 2012, according to crash data compiled by Streetsblog. Council Member Leroy Comrie this week announced legislation that would force NYPD to report on its handling of hit-and-run crash investigations.

Queens City Council Member Leroy Comrie is set to introduce a bill that may have an impact on how NYPD approaches hit-and-run crashes, which kill dozens of NYC pedestrians and cyclists a year.

Leroy Comrie. Photo: Observer

A statement from Comrie’s office says the bill would require NYPD to report to the council annually on “hit and run incidents that result in a fatality or severe injury with a description of all actions that were taken to determine who was responsible.” Comrie also plans to introduce a resolution “calling for the NYPD to include the mandatory collection of video surveillance from cameras within the vicinity of a hit-and-run accident that results in a fatality or severe injury.”

At least 37 pedestrians and cyclists have been killed by hit-and-run drivers in NYC since January 2012, according to crash data compiled by Streetsblog. The vast majority of drivers involved in those crashes were not immediately caught or identified.

A loophole in state law gives motorists who have been drinking an incentive to flee the scene of a crash, and many hit-and-run cases are closed when a driver says he or she did not see the victim.

We’ve asked Comrie’s staff how the bill and resolution will define “severe injury.” The new NYPD protocol, announced earlier this year, is intended to trigger investigations of incidents involving critical injury, a standard that excludes many crashes.

Comrie voted in favor of the proposed NYC speed camera demonstration program, now stalled in the state legislature, and is a supporter of red light cameras. He is scheduled to announce the hit-and-run bill and resolution this afternoon in Cambria Heights, at an intersection where a motorist was killed in a high-speed crash in 2012.

A Sheepshead Bay driver who ran a red light, jumped a curb and struck three people, killing one, has not been charged criminally by NYPD or Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.

The mother and fiancé of Yuliya Hermanska. Photo: Daily News

Yuliya Hermanska, 27, died from her injuries a week after the March 23 crash, according to the Daily News.

Police say the driver, Mikhail Nulman, was issued a summons for blowing through the red light at Ocean and Voorhies Aves. He swerved to avoid a collision with a turning car but lost control and mounted the curb, driving nearly 70 feet on the sidewalk and striking Hermanska and two teenage girls, both of whom survived, according to police accounts.

NYPD and a Hynes spokesperson told the Daily News that the case remains open. But despite the allegation that Nulman ran a red, and evidence that speed was a factor in the crash, Hermanska’s family and their attorney believe Nulman will not be charged for her death.

“He’s going to walk away,” said Vitaly Obodovsky, Hermanska’s fiancé. “Where’s the justice then? People go to jail for just being drunk behind the wheel and here they killed her.”

Edward Steinberg, a lawyer representing the victim’s family, said the case is a too-common example of a vehicular fatality involving an out-of-control driver that prosecutors fail to act on because neither alcohol nor drugs was involved.

To Steinberg’s point, this crash occurred a month after Martha Atwater was killed by a curb-jumping motorist in Cobble Hill, and a week before toddler Denim McLean and nine others were hit by a driver at a bus stop in East Flatbush. At least six people in NYC have been fatally struck on sidewalks, in green spaces, and inside places of business in 2013, according to crash data compiled by Streetsblog. In addition to the three victims in Brooklyn, one person was killed in the Bronx, one in Queens, and one in Manhattan.

No charges are known to have been filed against any of the drivers in these crashes.

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Yesterday at about 3:30 p.m., a taxi driver struck a cyclist on Seventh Avenue in Chelsea between 16th and 17th Street. Police made two arrests at the scene, though at this time NYPD is not revealing what they were charged with.

Seventh Avenue near 16th Street in Chelsea, where NYPD arrested two people after a taxi driver struck a cyclist yesterday. Photo; Google Maps

“The front right wheel of cab had basically run over the back wheel of the bicycle,” said reader Sandy, who lives on the block and walked by the scene at about 4:00 p.m. She said the crash was in the right-most lane of Seventh Avenue, about two-thirds of the way between 17th Street and 16th Street.

FDNY says that EMS responded at 3:32 p.m. and left seven minutes later, although Sandy reports seeing an ambulance on the scene after 4:00. FDNY said that EMS did not transport anyone to a hospital.

NYPD reports that officers responded at 3:31 and made two arrests at the scene, though the Collision Investigation Squad was not involved. After 4:00, a police van arrived to assist the cruiser and officers already on the scene. According to Sandy, the handcuffed cab driver was standing by his vehicle in Seventh Avenue, which is the border between the 10th and 13th precincts. It’s not known who the other arrested individual was; Sandy said she did not see a cyclist on the scene.

We’ll update with more information as the story develops.

The brother of a man killed in an apparent dooring incident in the Bronx, a crash that NYPD failed to investigate for over a month, says police have stopped working the case due to a lack of evidence, DNAinfo reports.

Joseph Nelson. Photo via DNAinfo

Joseph Nelson, 54, was riding his bike near the intersection of Fordham Road and Jerome Avenue on the afternoon of April 14, 2012, when according to an autopsy report he collided with the open door of a parked car. Paramedics found Nelson unconscious in the street.

Nelson died shortly after the crash, but the 52nd Precinct did not inform the NYPD Accident Investigation Squad until May 18.

The victim’s brother, John Nelson, told DNAinfo last October that NYPD was uncommunicative after the department told him of his brother’s death. ”I got one initial call,” said Nelson. “Aside from that, I got no information, no assistance, nothing at all from the Police Department.”

As in other instances where AIS failed to begin its work immediately after a crash that resulted in the death of a cyclist or pedestrian, police said they had no evidence to pursue the case. In October an investigator told John Nelson the file would be closed. In a follow-up DNAinfo story published today, Nelson, who planned to travel from Virginia for the installation of his brother’s Ghost Bike memorial, said he has not spoken with investigators since. Streetsblog has asked NYPD for confirmation that police stopped investigating the crash.

“My brother wasn’t trash. He wasn’t a throwaway or disposable,” Nelson said, fairly encapsulating the NYPD approach to cyclist and pedestrian injuries and deaths.

For years, it was NYPD policy to investigate a traffic crash only when a victim was dead or believed likely to die. When a doctor told officers that cyclist Stefanos Tsigrimanis wasn’t in mortal danger after he was hit by a driver in Brooklyn, AIS did not return to the scene for 46 days. Because NYPD did not know that Brooklyn pedestrian Clara Heyworth had died after she was struck by an unlicensed driver who was believed to be drunk, AIS was not dispatched for at least three days. Prosecutors dropped all charges related to Heyworth’s death, and her husband has filed a lawsuit against NYPD for failing to properly investigate the crash. Police initially blamed Brooklyn cyclist Mathieu Lefevre for his own death, with prosecutors from the office of District Attorney Charles Hynes taking up the case after Lefevre’s family got the attention of the media.

In March NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly announced that the department would abandon the “dead or likely to die” protocol, and assign more officers to investigate crashes. Nevertheless, NYPD continues to declare “no criminality suspected” almost immediately after collisions that cause injury and death.

The speeding hit-and-run killer of a Staten Island woman who died protecting her grandchild has been sentenced to six months in jail and a five-year license suspension, as the result of a plea deal from District Attorney Dan Donovan, according to the Staten Island Advance.

Clara Almazo died protecting her grandson from Brian McGurk, who in less than six years could be back behind the wheel. Photos via Advance

Clara Almazo, 52, was walking home from church with her daughter and grandson at around 9:50 p.m. on April 5, 2012, when she was hit by Brian McGurk on Cary Avenue at Elizabeth Street. Almazo pushed 8-year-old Brian Herrera-Ramirez out of the path of McGurk’s Ford SUV before she was struck, reports said.

In court last week, Assistant District Attorney Mark Palladino said McGurk was driving “well in excess” of 45 mph when he hit Almazo. Said one witness, whose home security system caught the crash on video: “The [SUV] threw her up into the air, from 10 to 20 feet. She went flying.”

Almazo, who had 10 kids and 10 grandchildren, died shortly after being transported to the hospital. Her grandson suffered a broken leg and has since recovered from his physical injuries. From the Advance:

“He wakes up at night crying,” [Almazo's daughter Sophia] Herrera said through a Spanish interpreter as muffled sobs rose from the gallery in state Supreme Court, St. George. “Every time he goes to school he has to cross that street.”

McGurk turned himself in to police some three hours after the crash. The Post reported that he was accompanied by his brother, who is an NYPD officer, and a second man, a former cop.

McGurk refused a blood alcohol test, a police source told the Advance. A source quoted by the Post a week after the crash said police investigated the possibility that McGurk was drunk, and noted a loophole in New York State law that gives motorists who have been drinking an incentive to flee the scene of a crash. “You face tougher charges if you stay and you’re drunk,” the source said.

According to the Advance, in court last week McGurk said “he didn’t realize at the time what had happened and went into a state of shock.”

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Every day some 40 pedestrians are wounded by drivers in NYC. Victims are often left with serious injuries, but rarely is the public made aware of anything beyond the basic immediate circumstances of a crash — where it occurred, the condition of the victims when transported from the scene, and whether the driver was (a) intoxicated or (b) immediately cleared of wrongdoing by NYPD.

Shirley Shea was struck by a school bus driver on the Upper West Side in February 2012. She died last December.

Injury-causing crashes are so common that, even if they wanted to, the city’s innumerable media outlets would have difficulty reporting them all, much less keep up with the story of each victim’s recovery, or eventual death. In the words of “Killed by Automobile” [PDF], the seminal 1999 report on city traffic fatalities, these incidents “flicker briefly across the city’s consciousness and then flutter away, leaving in their wake only grieving families and friends.”

Susan Shea-Klot is the daughter of Shirley Shea, who was struck by the driver of a yellow school bus on the Upper West Side on February 17, 2012. Media coverage was scant. Shea’s name was not cited in the only report we could find, a brief WABC item that seems to exist only because the crash happened near the station’s studio.

A woman was struck by a school bus Friday afternoon on the Upper West Side.

It happened around 4 p.m. at the intersection of 67th Street and Columbus Avenue, right outside the Eyewitness News studio.

The victim was rushed to St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital by ambulance.

She is said to have serious head and leg injuries.

Shea, 78, was indeed seriously hurt. She died on December 7, after 10 months in the hospital, during which time she was largely incapacitated and unable to speak.

The collision that killed Shea was notated as a pedestrian injury by the 20th Precinct in the February 2012 NYPD crash report, along with two other incidents at the same intersection. According to Shea-Klot, the driver was not charged by NYPD or Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance. “The district attorney’s office never contacted my father or anyone in my family,” says Shea-Klot.

This crash was one of an untold number of cases where a pedestrian or cyclist suffers fatal injuries, but a death is not reported by the press. It’s also one of thousands of crashes that happen every year in which a victim and loved ones are left to deal with the terrible life-altering consequences of an act of recklessness by a motorist who is free to keep driving. And since Shea lived for months, it is unlikely that the crash was investigated by the NYPD Accident Investigation Squad.

We learned of her mother’s death from a comment posted by Shea-Klot, who was kind enough to provide us with an account of her mother’s life, including the agony she and her family endured after the crash. We originally planned to publish passages from this account, but it is so eloquent and moving that we decided to run it verbatim. It appears in full after the jump.

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Denim McLean, the toddler who was one of 10 people struck by a curb-jumping motorist in East Flatbush last month, died from his injuries.

NYPD had a litany of excuses, but no charges, for the curb-jumping driver who killed 2-year-old Denim McLean. Photo via Daily News

NYPD initially told the media that the driver was northbound on Utica Avenue near Church Avenue when she swerved to avoid another vehicle. Police also said the 48-year-old driver ”accidentally” hit the accelerator instead of the brake as she approached a red light. Over the weekend the Post reported that the driver “told investigators her brakes failed before she blew a light and jumped the sidewalk.” No charges were filed by police or Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.

In the words of Council Member Peter Vallone Jr., this crash is another example of NYPD acting as defense counsel for the driver. More important, it again points to a justice system that cares less about the car on the bloody sidewalk than the feelings of the motorist who put it there.

A study conducted by doctors and researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center found that 6 percent of pedestrians injured by motorists were struck while on a sidewalk. Days before the crash that killed Denim McLean, the Post talked to attorney Steve Vaccaro about motorists who have escaped charges for recent curb-jumping incidents that resulted in death or injury. Of the driver who put 90-year-old Mansoor Day in extremely critical condition, an anonymous source said the “Manhattan District Attorney’s Office found that his behavior did not amount to criminality.” Likewise, the drivers who killed pedestrians Tenzin Drudak in Queens and Martha Atwater in Brooklyn were not charged for causing a death. Wrote the Post:

Under the law, when drivers haven’t been drinking, prosecutors must first find “recklessness” when applying the most serious criminal charges.

That means the driver was aware of the risk of his or her behavior but disregarded it anyway — a state of mind that is often difficult to prove in court.

One way to increase the odds of criminalizing driver behavior would be to presume that any motorist who ended up on the sidewalk was reckless.

That would put the onus on the driver to explain how he got up there, similar to the presumption of recklessness assumed for drivers who get behind the wheel sloshed.

Others are ahead of New York in penalizing reckless drivers. In Alabama, to cause a death while violating a traffic law is to commit homicide, regardless of intent. The Washington, DC, negligent homicide statute specifically precludes willful or wanton acts, and requires only that a vehicular death be precipitated by careless or reckless driving.

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Julio Acevedo, accused of the high-speed hit-and-run crash that killed Nachman and Raizel Glauber and their unborn child, was convicted in the court of opinion well before he was charged with manslaughter. But the failure of New York’s traffic justice system to keep Acevedo off the roads also allowed this tragedy to happen.

The crash that killed the Glauber family was no accident. Photo: Daily News

The Daily News has reported that Acevedo’s license should have been suspended in February when he went to court on a drunk driving charge — he was reportedly arrested after chasing a livery cab. But the judge, who normally doesn’t preside over such proceedings, misinterpreted the law. He also refused the prosecutor’s request to set bail.

Justice Michael Gary said that if he was wrong to let Acevedo retain his license, the judge at Acevedo’s next hearing, set for April 10, could correct him. Two weeks later, the Glaubers were dead.

Losing one’s drivers license is no easy task in New York State. As we’ve reported, as long as a motorist stays sober and pay his fines, he can expect to retain his driving privileges with little interruption, even if he causes a fatality.

Gary acknowledged his mistake. But the fact that he was unwilling to temporarily revoke the license of someone accused of a drunken car chase speaks to a system that holds the ability to drive as sacrosanct. If not for Acevedo’s criminal record, even if his license had been suspended at the time of the crash that killed the Glaubers, it’s doubtful the charges against him would be as severe.

Acevedo’s attorney claims prosecutors don’t have the evidence to convict her client of manslaughter. It’s her job to say that, but given the state of traffic justice in New York, she may be right.

Every case is different, of course, but recent decisions by the state’s highest court have in effect put a straightjacket on prosecutors who pursue serious charges against motorists who injure and kill. In 2004, Michael Edward Prindle led police on a high-speed chase through Rochester after he and another man were caught trying to steal two snow plows, according to court documents [PDF]. Prindle subsequently rammed another vehicle, killing a passenger. Prindle was convicted of murder, but in 2011 the Court of Appeals overturned the verdict.

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Just hours after the City Council transportation committee unanimously passed a resolution asking Albany to take action, the Senate transportation committee advanced a bill, with an 18-1 vote, that would close a loophole in Hayley and Diego’s Law, with the goal of increased enforcement of the state’s careless driving law by police and district attorneys.

The driver who killed Hayley Ng, 4, and Diego Martinez, 3, walked away without charges. Photos via Daily News

The law is named after Hayley Ng, 4, and Diego Martinez, 3, who were killed when a driver left his parked van in reverse, allowing it to roll into a group of pre-schoolers on a Chinatown sidewalk in 2009. No charges were filed against the driver by Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau or his successor Cy Vance.

The law provides a middle ground between summonses for trafic violations and more serious criminal charges, such as criminally negligent homicide, which due in part to restrictive state court decisions rarely lead to convictions.

A driver charged under Hayley and Diego’s Law can receive a combination of the following penalties: a fine up to $750 or 15 days in jail, a mandated driving course, and suspension or revocation of the driver’s license or registration. For the second offense, the driver could also be charged with a misdemeanor.

Because Hayley and Diego’s Law is technically categorized as a traffic violation, like failure to yield or speeding, NYPD will not issue a summons unless an officer personally witnesses the offense or the department’s Collision Investigation Squad launches an investigation.

Many of the law’s supporters view the loophole closure as an extra step that is only necessary because NYPD is reluctant to enforce the existing law. “We are strongly of the view that Hayley and Diego’s law, as passed, can be used,” bill sponsor Daniel Squadron told Streetsblog this afternoon. At yesterday’s hearing, Council Member Dan Halloran, calling the loophole closure “long overdue,” made a similar observation.

As it’s currently enforced, the law “results in officers disregarding the testimony of eye witnesses, or even admissions of the driver, when determining the cause of a crash,” said Transportation Alternatives in a statement.

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