Streetsblog New York City

A killer charged with the DWI manslaughter death of a six-year-old child walked out of court Tuesday without spending a day in jail.

Zhaneya Butcher. Photo via Daily News

Prosecutors say Kent Lowrie, 53, was legally drunk when he hit and killed Zhaneya Butcher last summer as the little girl ran toward an ice cream truck on 104th Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. Lowrie pled guilty to manslaughter as part of a deal that resulted in five years’ probation, a $1,000 fine, a six-month license revocation and the mandated use of an ignition interlock device for one year, according to court records. The Daily News reports:

Instead of going to a grand jury, prosecutors opted to offer Lowrie a plea deal. They feared that when a margin of error for the blood-alcohol test was factored in, Lowrie would not have been considered intoxicated and would have faced lesser charges.

There was also no evidence that Lowrie was speeding.

Given that Lowrie faced up to seven years in prison, Zhaneya’s relatives were understandably shocked by the outcome of this case. Implicit in the decision to negotiate such a favorable deal for Lowrie is the fact that, under ordinary circumstances, the driver who strikes a child with deadly force on a neighborhood street is considered blameless by default.

The state legislature has given police and prosecutors new tools to offer a modicum of protection to vulnerable street users like Zhaneya Butcher and, ideally, to deter drivers from acts of deadly recklessness. But as long as those tools go unused, motorists will continue to maim and kill with relative impunity, and victims of traffic violence will be deemed culpable for their own deaths and injuries.

A woman who accompanied Lowrie on Tuesday was quoted as saying, “People should keep their kids in the house and not running between parked cars.” As repugnant a statement as that is, it’s more or less what the criminal justice system is saying, too.

The office of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes will conduct a review into the death of cyclist Mathieu Lefevre, according to the borough’s top prosecutor for vehicular crimes.

Craig Esswein, chief of the vehicular crimes bureau, told Streetsblog that reviewing deadly traffic crashes is standard procedure. “Any time there’s a fatality the NYPD does their investigation, and we do our own.”

Lefevre’s death at the hands of a hit-and-run truck driver in Williamsburg last October has made headlines, owing to revelations that NYPD withheld details of the crash from the victim’s family and failed to gather evidence at the scene. Asked about NYPD’s handling of the investigation, Esswein said, “We will be looking into the matter.”

Though no photos of the scene have been released to the Lefevre family — police reportedly didn’t take pictures due to a broken camera — Esswein says they do exist. He says those pictures will be examined along with video of the collision, which according to NYPD records shows that the truck driver dragged Lefevre and his bike for several yards as he made an unsignaled right-hand turn. “We’re going to review it all,” said Esswein.

In a statement issued this week, Mathieu’s mother Erika Lefevre revealed that NYPD has charged the driver, identified by police as Leonardo Degianni, for failure to signal and failure to exercise due care. To date, no charges have been issued for the victim’s death, or for leaving the scene of a fatal crash. “We urge the Kings County District Attorney’s Office to carefully review this case,” wrote Lefevre, “and bring appropriate charges.”

Lefevre’s family and friends have launched a letter-writing campaign to Hynes’ office asking for a careful review of the case. More information is available here.

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance scored a significant victory last week, earning a homicide conviction in the case of a driver who killed a pedestrian in East Harlem nine years ago. But the circumstances of the crash, and their striking similarity to a 2011 fatality that resulted in a slap-on-the-wrist plea bargain, raise questions about how city prosecutors handle most pedestrian deaths.

Francesca Maytin (inset) and Lynette Caban. Photo: Post

On January 2, 2003, 82-year-old Francesca Maytin was crossing Third Avenue between East 107th and East 108th streets when Lynette Caban backed her Jeep Cherokee into the intersection, striking Maytin hard enough to throw her a distance of over 18 feet, according to a Vance press release. Caban, now 39, was driving with a suspended license at the time of the collision, and had received four summonses for “similar conduct” in the three months prior. She also had a plastic bag taped over the right rear window of her vehicle, which obstructed her view. On January 13, Caban was convicted of criminally negligent homicide. She is scheduled to be sentenced in March. (The Post reports that Caban may not face jail beyond time served, and says she continues to drive using a different name.)

The Caban case was brought by Vance’s predecessor, Robert Morgenthau, and concluded only after the Court of Appeals ruled in 2010 that driving with a suspended license can be used as evidence of criminal negligence. That decision was another big win, and was hailed by Vance as “a significant step in holding drivers accountable for dangerous and unsafe operation of a vehicle.” Which makes the case of Edwin Carrasco all the more puzzling.

On June 30 of last year, Yolanda Casal, 78, and her 41-year-old daughter Anais Emmanuel were crossing Amsterdam Avenue near West 98th Street when Carrasco, 38, backed into them with his Ford Explorer. Casal was killed, Emmanuel hospitalized. Like Lynette Caban, Carrasco was driving with a suspended license. Vance did not charge Carrasco for killing Casal or injuring Emmanuel, though Carrasco was reportedly breaking at least two laws at the time of the crash. According to the online database of the New York State Unified Court System, Carrasco pled guilty to a top charge of aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle in the third degree, a misdemeanor stipulating that he drove without a license when he knew or should have known that he didn’t have one. Carrasco’s penalty: a $500 fine.

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The family of Mathieu Lefevre has filed a lawsuit against the NYPD for refusing to release information related to the hit-and-run collision that killed the 30-year-old Brooklyn cyclist last October.

According to the complaint, filed in New York State Supreme Court on December 30 [PDF], NYPD denied a freedom of information request from Lefevre’s parents seeking records pertaining to the crash, on the grounds that the investigation is ongoing. The Lefevres appealed, citing their belief that the records in question are not exempt from disclosure under the law. NYPD failed to respond, effectively denying the appeal.

NYPD routinely denies access to information on deadly crashes, often based on the claim that releasing even the most rudimentary details would jeopardize crash investigations. The Lefevre lawsuit challenges that practice, based in part on the fact that NYPD has declared that no charges will be filed for Mathieu’s death.

The summary of the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Lefevres by attorney Steve Vaccaro of Rankin & Taylor, reads in part:

NYPD admits that it possesses records requested by the Lefevres, but has stonewalled for nearly two months, refusing to disclose those records without a valid justification. The two grounds advanced by NYPD for withholding the records are completely lacking in merit.

First, NYPD asserts that it can withhold all records concerning Lefevre’s death, so long as its investigation of his death is still open. That is incorrect. FOIL exempts from disclosure only records the release of which would interfere with an ongoing investigation. NYPD does not suggest even the possibility of such interference.

Second, NYPD asserts that release of records concerning Lefevre’s death would jeopardize an impartial trial or adjudication. But NYPD has already announced there will be no criminal charges related to Lefevre’s death. Absent criminal charges, there is no right to a trial by jury, and therefore no chance of a tainted adjudication.

In December Vaccaro sent a letter to NYPD indicating that, according to officers involved in the case, the department’s Accident Investigation Squad has all but concluded that the truck driver who hit Lefevre, identified in the crash report as Leonardo Degianni, was unaware of the collision. The letter also points to conflicting accounts of the collision from NYPD, and says Vaccaro was told that the AIS lost vital evidence. (Disclosure: Vaccaro represented Streetsblog for our freedom of information request to obtain documents from CUNY related to the effort to erase the Prospect Park West bike lane.)

“The Lefevres seek only to learn the truth about the death of their son,” reads the suit summary. “NYPD’s stated reasons for hiding the truth from the Lefevres plainly lack merit.”

Time after time, when a person loses his or her life while walking or biking in the city, the narrative unfolds according to script. Pedestrian or cyclist killed. Driver remained at the scene. No charges filed. Not only is it rare to hear of a driver held to even the minimum standard of care by police and prosecutors, more often than not NYPD would have the public believe that if anyone is to blame, it’s the victim.

New York Times coverage of the crash that killed Mathieu Lefevre offered readers a rare look at an NYPD deeply biased against victims of traffic violence. Photo: Robert Stolarik/NYT

When Brooklyn cyclist Mathieu Lefevre was killed by a hit-and-run driver in October, NYPD initially told the media that Lefevre had run a red light and that he was riding in the truck driver’s blind spot. The NYPD crash report contradicts both those claims, yet the department’s final public statement on the case may well be “There’s no criminality. That’s why they call it an accident.”

Rasha Shamoon was riding her bike home in the early morning hours of August 5, 2008 when she was struck by the driver of a Range Rover at Bowery and Delancey. Shamoon, 31, was an experienced cyclist whose bike was covered with reflective tape and equipped with front and rear lights. Limiting witness interviews to the driver, who at 21 had amassed a record of six traffic convictions, and his two passengers, NYPD faulted Shamoon for the crash.

In November 2009, 22-year-old Seth Kahn was killed by a bus driver while crossing Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. Police at first told reporters that Kahn was running to beat the light when he was crushed by the rear wheels of the turning bus. Days later, however, bus driver Jeremy Philhower was ticketed for failing to yield. Almost a year after the crash it was determined that Philhower, who had a history of texting behind the wheel and had reportedly posted comments on Facebook about his desire to kill people, was driving too fast and not looking where he was going.

In the immediate aftermath of any single crash, it’s impossible to tell whether NYPD has sufficient cause to exonerate the driver. The department won’t release details from investigations and withholds crash reports from public scrutiny. But when the data from those reports is compiled by the New York State DOT and vetted by researchers, the cumulative picture debunks the NYPD’s blame-the-victim-first protocol.

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It isn’t often that stories of traffic justice denied make the pages of New York Times, but the case of Mathieu Lefevre got the attention of Jim Dwyer, whose article in today’s paper highlights NYPD ineptitude and provides further details of the inhumane treatment suffered by the Lefevre family at the hands of the 90th Precinct.

Deputy Inspector Michael M. Kemper is in charge of Brooklyn's 90th Precinct, where Mathieu Lefevre was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

Having flown in from Canada after learning of their son’s death, Mathieu’s parents Erika and Alain went to the city morgue to view his remains. There, they were told by a detective to go to the station house for a copy of the crash report and to pick up Mathieu’s belongings. Here’s what happened next:

The 90th Precinct station house proved to be a House of No, as Ms. Lefevre described it: the family was told at the desk that there was no detective available to speak with them, that Mr. Lefevre’s property was not there and that no report on the accident was available.

So they waited.

“After some time elapsed, I called the detective at the morgue, who had given us her phone number in case we ran into problems,” Ms. Lefevre said. Eventually, a detective in the 90th Precinct explained that the person handling the investigation of their son’s death would not be back for several days. “The detective we saw said he had no access to the information, that they do not share files,” Ms. Lefevre said.

After four hours, she said, they left.

It took a week for the Lefevres to claim Mathieu’s effects — though according to the Times they were at the station house all along — and almost two weeks to obtain a copy of the crash report, which conflicted with NYPD statements to the media and has generated more questions than answers.

The most enraging aspect of NYPD’s mishandling of the Lefevre case is that there is nothing unusual about it. We can’t say it any better than Streetsblog commenter Media Maven, who writes: “The way the NYPD is treating the Lefevres is standard operating procedure. This isn’t a particularly bad case. It’s entirely normal. Virtually all ped and cyclist fatalities are treated as ‘accidents’ and blamed on the victim. The drivers who did the killing are rarely investigated or brought to justice. Getting information about the circumstances of the killing out of the NYPD is almost impossible unless you can afford a lawyer who is really willing and able to go after it.” Witness, for example, the detective who handed the Lefevres an attorney’s business card, knowing the swamp they were about to wade into.

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The driver who dragged Milo Montivilla down Broadway in the Bronx says he never saw him. Photo: Daily News

A 57-year-old Bronx man was struck and killed by a school bus driver on Tuesday.

According to reports, at around 6:00 a.m. Milo Montivilla was crossing with the light at Broadway and Mosholu Avenue in North Riverdale when the bus driver, turning right, ran him over. The Daily News interviewed a witness at the scene:

“He was walking to catch his bus and the [school] bus just hit him and dragged him down the street,” said the witness, who declined to give her name.

“He was under it for a good 10 minutes. I couldn’t believe it.”

The witness said the bus operator did not appear to have seen the pedestrian and continued driving.

“Everybody was screaming, ‘You hit someone! You hit someone!’ Everyone bum-rushed the street,” she said.

“That’s when he stopped and got out. Everyone was on their phones calling the cops.”

The driver was too distressed to talk at the scene but could be overheard telling a supervisor on the phone: “I didn’t see him. It was too dark.”

The driver’s identity was not released. He was not charged.

“I didn’t seem him/her” are the magic words for the motorist who pulverizes another person, even if the victim is breaking no laws, is directly in front of the vehicle when hit, and is dragged down the street until passersby intervene. The driver’s speed, the possibility that he was distracted in some way — these factors seemingly become irrelevant to police and prosecutors when presented with the invisible pedestrian or cyclist defense, despite state laws enacted to protect vulnerable street users from everyday driver negligence.

The crash that killed Milo Montivilla occurred in the 50th Precinct. The commanding officer there is Captain Kevin J. Burke. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to Captain Burke or other precinct higher-ups, drop in on the next community council meeting. The 50th Precinct council meets the second Thursday of every month at the station house, located at 3450 Kingsbridge Avenue, at 7:30 p.m. Be sure to call ahead (718-543-5978) to confirm meeting times and dates.

Speaking at yesterday’s Transportation Alternatives rally at 1 Police Plaza, Erika Lefevre pointed to inconsistencies between initial accounts of the hit-and-run collision that killed her son Mathieu and the version offered by the crash report, which her family obtained only after weeks of NYPD stonewalling.

The case of Mathieu Lefevre is only the latest in which relatives and friends of traffic crime victims are kept in the dark by a police department with a long record of withholding information regarding cyclist and pedestrian deaths. It does, however, afford a detailed look at NYPD incompetence and obfuscation. For example:

• An NYPD officer told Gothamist that the department “had concluded that Lefevre had run a red light at the intersection.” The glaring flaw in that conclusion is that if both Lefevre and driver Leonardo Degianni were traveling in the same direction, and Lefevre ran a light, presumably Degianni could not have struck Lefevre unless he did the same. Regardless, there is no mention in the crash report of either party running a light.
• The prevailing narrative of the crash, which originated with NYPD, is that Lefevre was riding to the right of Degianni’s commercial truck when Degianni turned into him. The diagram on the crash report seems to depict a rear-end collision, and the officer’s notes say Degianni made the turn after the collision.
• NYPD told the Lefevre family that the truck that hit Mathieu was identified through visible damage, but the vehicle damage codes section of the crash report was marked through, with no details documented.
• On October 24, an NYPD spokesperson told Gothamist: “The driver did not know that he hit the cyclist.” The police report, amended on October 30 with Degianni’s identity (which police would not provide to Gothamist or the Lefevre family), includes no explanation of why Degianni left the scene, or what circumstances led him to run over a person on a bicycle without knowing it.
• NYPD told Erika Lefevre that charges had been dropped against the driver, suggesting that charges were filed at some point. This contradicts a statement, also reported by Gothamist on October 24, that no charges were filed, as well as remarks from a department spokesperson who told Metro: “There’s no criminality. That’s why they call it an accident.”

Inexplicably, even as NYPD refused information to the Lefevres, the department was talking to the media. On October 26, a week after her son was killed, Erika Lefevre told reporters, “All we know is what we have read in the papers.” On Wednesday, Lefevre spoke directly to NYPD.

“Today, I am asking NYPD to stop leaking misinformation to the press about crash victims,” she said. “That only hurts victims and their families and makes NYPD appear unprofessional and biased.” Lefevre said that to this point NYPD has not complied with freedom of information requests and has not permitted her family to see video of the crash and other evidence police say they have.

Transportation Alternatives today delivered over 2,500 citizen letters to Ray Kelly demanding that NYPD crack down on dangerous driving, and announced a comprehensive probe into how the department handles traffic crash investigations.

Flanked by dozens of supporters and victims of traffic violence at 1 Police Plaza, TA executive director Paul Steely White excoriated NYPD for what he called a “cavalier attitude” toward lawless driving. While hundreds are killed and thousands are injured by reckless drivers in the city every year, enforcement of traffic laws is relatively rare, and drivers who cause suffering and death are routinely excused by police and prosecutors without as much as a summons.

“It’s the NYPD’s job to keep dangerous driving in check by holding reckless drivers accountable,” said White, “but they are simply not taking that job seriously.”

Calling for a zero tolerance approach to a “public safety crisis,” TA will have attorneys review NYPD reports on recent crashes that resulted in serious injury or death. Evaluations will focus on whether police followed proper post-crash procedure and if victims were “guaranteed a full and fair investigation.”

Erika Lefevre, whose son Mathieu was killed by a hit-and-run driver while riding his bike in East Williamsburg in October, said that her family is still waiting for definitive information about the crash. Initially, police told reporters that Mathieu ran a red light at Morgan Avenue and Meserole Street and was struck by the driver of a flatbed truck making a right-hand turn. The NYPD report, however, indicates that Mathieu was hit from behind, and makes no mention of either Mathieu or the driver running a light.

The report identifies the driver who struck Lefevre as Leonardo Degianni of College Point. Degianni, 48, was driving a truck registered to Imperium Construction of Ridgewood. After hitting and dragging Lefevre, Degianni left the scene. Police found the truck a short distance from the crash site but did not locate Degianni for days. He was not charged.

Erika Lefevre said police have video of the crash along with other evidence, none of which her family has been allowed to see.

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Again: If an unlicensed driver going the wrong way on a city street is not prosecutable for killing or injuring a pedestrian, who is? Photo: Daily News

For at least the second time this year, an unlicensed driver will be punished with no more than a token fine for killing a Manhattan pedestrian.

On June 30, Yolanda Casal, 78, and her 41-year-old daughter Anais Emmanuel were crossing Amsterdam Avenue near West 98th Street when Edwin Carrasco, 38, of Paterson, New Jersey, drove his Ford Explorer into them while backing up in pursuit of a parking spot. Casal was later pronounced dead at St. Luke’s Hospital; Emmanuel was hospitalized with injuries.

Reports indicated that Carrasco, who has a history of license suspensions and reckless driving, was initially charged by NYPD with driving with a suspended license, unsafe backing and failure to exercise due care. Though Carrasco was reportedly breaking at least two laws at the time of the crash, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance levied no charges related to the death or injuries caused by Carrasco’s negligence.

According to the online database of the New York State Unified Court System, Carrasco pled guilty in Manhattan Criminal Court on September 22 to a top charge of aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle in the third degree, a misdemeanor that stipulates that Carrasco drove without a license when he knew or should have known that he didn’t have a license. He is due to pay a $500 fine in December.

Days after Casal was killed, the unlicensed dump truck driver who ran down Upper East Side pedestrian Laurence Renard pled guilty to aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle in the third degree and, like Carrasco, was fined $500.

As a DA candidate, Vance pledged to hold dangerous drivers accountable for their actions. In July, responding to a query regarding the investigation of Casal’s death, a Vance spokesperson told Streetsblog: “When we prosecute a case we look at the elements of the law and the facts of our case to determine whether we can go forward with the case. If we find that the facts of a case fit criminally negligent homicide, we will not hesitate to charge them.”