Streetsblog New York City

A stencil memorializes Martha Atwater, who was killed when a pickup truck driver jumped the curb and crushed her on the sidewalk in Brooklyn Heights. NYPD said that "no criminality is suspected." Photo: Time's Up!

Last night, a group of activists traveled to the sites of eight traffic fatalities and stenciled paint memorials for those who lost their lives walking or biking in crashes for which NYPD declared “no criminality suspected” within hours of the crash. This morning, Time’s Up! led a memorial bike ride to the eight crash sites.

In a plea for justice from Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, the stencil memorials ask, ”Why, Ray, Why?”

Memorials were stenciled for:

• Mike Rogalle, killed on the sidewalk by an SUV driver who jumped the curb on Beekman Street in Lower Manhattan last April.
• An unidentified woman, who was struck and killed by a private dump truck driver in January while she was biking on East 23rd Street near Madison Avenue.
• Mir Hossain, a taxi driver who was standing next to his vehicle in January when a speeding SUV driver rear-ended his double-parked cab, sending him flying to the ground and killing him.
• An unidentified woman, killed in February after a two-car crash sent one of the vehicles onto the sidewalk at Third Avenue and East 27th Street, where she was standing.
• Rubin Baum, killed in September by a driver who ran a red light at Park Avenue and East 59th Street. Baum pushed his wife out of the way of the oncoming driver, saving her life before he was pinned beneath the vehicle.
• Ryo Oyamada, killed by the driver of an NYPD cruiser on 40th Avenue near 10th Street in Queensbridge in February.
• Martha Atwater, killed by a pickup truck driver on the sidewalk at the corner of Clinton Street and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn in February.
• Tenzin Drudak, killed by a distracted driver on the sidewalk at 30th Street and Thompson Avenue in Long Island City on Monday.

In all of these cases, NYPD declared there was “no criminality suspected” of the driver. While NYPD has recently modified how it handles crash investigations, results have yet to be seen.

Gothamist has been following the case of Ryo Oyamada, the Japanese student who was struck and killed by an NYPD officer near his Queensbridge home in the early hours of February 21. The department claims the cruiser was moving at 35 to 39 mph on 40th Avenue, with lights on, as officers responded to a call, and that Oyamada stepped in front of the cruiser mid-block. But multiple witnesses say there were no lights or sirens, and that the officer was driving at 70 mph when Oyamada, 24, was hit near 10th Street.

Ryo Oyamada was struck and killed by an NYPD cruiser in February. Police blamed Oyamada for the crash, but refuse to release a video the department says supports its version of events. Photo via Gothamist

Contrary to the official NYPD version of events, Oyamada’s father says police initially told the family that, to avoid alerting their suspect, officers did not have lights or sirens activated. Video taken after the crash shows locals confronting NYPD about police speeding through the neighborhood.

Like the family of Mathieu Lefevre, the Oyamadas say they have been treated poorly by police. NYPD has refused to allow the family access to information about the crash, including video that, according to an officer who met with community members, shows the cruiser’s lights were on.

Oyamada is at least the second pedestrian killed by an NYPD cruiser strike in the last year. In April 2012, officers reportedly ran down Tamon Robinson, who they suspected was stealing paving stones, in Canarsie.

In its monthly crash data reports, NYPD lists the number of collisions involving ambulances, fire trucks, buses, taxis, and non-municipal vehicles, categorized by type. Conspicuous by its absence is a line item for NYPD vehicle crashes.

NYPD-involved crashes resulting in property damage, or civilian injuries and deaths, are not uncommon, whether it’s a cyclist knocked to the ground or pedestrians hospitalized or killed when a police vehicle jumps the curb. Then there are police chases, acknowledged and alleged, during which suspects have crashed vehicles into bystanders.

A spate of such crashes in 2009 and 2010 left three pedestrians, a cyclist, and two vehicle occupants dead. Mary Celine Graham was killed when a robbery suspect attempting to evade police collided with another vehicle and slammed into a group of pedestrians in Harlem. Karen Schmeer was fatally struck by men suspected of taking over-the-counter allergy medicine from a CVS pharmacy on the Upper West Side. Restaurant worker and father of three Pablo Pasarán was run over in Long Island City by a suspect after an alleged drug buy. According to witnesses, a suspected car thief was fleeing police when he hit and killed 38-year-old Greenpoint mother Violetta Kryzak. A video camera captured an apparent Staten Island chase that led to the death of a couple with young sons.

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After the driver who killed six year-old Amar Diarrassouba on Thursday was let off with two summonses, for failure to yield to a pedestrian and not exercising due care, NYPD says its Accident Investigation Squad has concluded its investigation. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance refuses to comment.

Assembly Member Robert J. Rodriguez, Borough President Scott Stringer and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito announce Stringer's letter to DOT. Photo: Stephen Miller

This afternoon, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer was joined by other elected officials and approximately a dozen community leaders on the sidewalk in front of Diarrassouba’s school, P.S. 155 in East Harlem, to show their outrage.

“We mourn, but we also are angry,” Stringer said. “We should never be standing at a press conference like this again demanding action.”

But instead of demanding action from the NYPD and the DA, Stringer announced that he is sending a letter to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. “This is a shot across the bow to the Department of Transportation to take meaningful action,” Stringer said.

It’s a strange tactic, given that DOT is expected to continue its implementation of protected bike lanes and pedestrian refuges in East Harlem this year — a project that was, for a time, obstructed by Stringer appointees to Community Board 11.

Citing the significant safety gains of DOT’s Safe Routes to Schools program, Stringer’s letter calls for some worthy improvements, including bringing more Leading Pedestrian Interval signals to East Harlem (currently the neighborhood only has two, while there are 143 in the rest of Manhattan) and installing reduced-speed school zone signs at P.S. 155, which currently has none. But by focusing his critique solely on DOT, Stringer is letting law enforcement off the hook.

“We’re certainly going to defer to the police and the district attorney on these issues,” said Stringer, who is not sending a letter to the DA or NYPD. His specific policy recommendations to DOT, meanwhile, indicate that he has no problem telling less powerful agencies what to do.

Stringer’s letter doesn’t mention the street safety project that will bring bike lanes and pedestrian islands to First Avenue and has already redesigned a stretch of Second Avenue just west of P.S. 155. It also doesn’t mention that two of Stringer’s community board appointments, Erik Mayor and Frank Brija, delayed the project by claiming it would make asthma rates worse. In the end, the full community board voted to support the traffic calming plan not once but twice.

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You don't normally hear from NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly or Manhattan DA Cy Vance when a child is killed by a motorist.

In case you missed it, after years of bashing the city’s efforts to make walking and cycling less dangerous, the editors of the New York Post have decided they care about children’s safety. But in its Saturday editorial persecuting the crossing guard who was not present when 6-year-old Amar Diarrassouba was fatally struck by a truck driver, the Post chose not to acknowledge that if police and prosecutors were doing their jobs, the NYPD crossing guard program would not be necessary in the first place.

Look at today’s headline stack: a young couple and their baby killed by a hit-and-run driver in Brooklyn; a 61-year-old pedestrian in critical condition in the Bronx; another pedestrian seriously hurt by a curb-jumping motorist in Midtown. All this death and suffering, and more, since Amar Diarrassouba was killed last Thursday. The fact is reckless driving is rampant in NYC, it happens at all hours of the day and night, and the law enforcers charged with bringing it under control — NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, and, in little Amar’s case, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance — have failed to do so.

From the Post editorial:

New York’s criminal-justice system has a duty to hold this guard liable for her words and her actions. The authorities need to probe this case thoroughly — and pursue the full measure of punishment allowed by the law.

New York City employs more than 2,000 crossing guards to keep its schoolchildren safe as they navigate Gotham’s busy streets and cross dangerous intersections. Those who take these jobs take on an important public trust. Amar Diarrassouba’s death is a reminder of the terrible price that the innocent pay when someone in a position of public trust blows off that responsibility.

It’s much easier for the Post to scapegoat Flavia Roman than to take on the players responsible for the city’s deficient traffic justice system, and though editorials trashing street safety measures are common, we can’t recall the last time the paper called for the prosecution of a killer motorist. But forget the cowardice and rank hypocrisy on display here. Let’s talk about public trust.

Whose job is it to protect children when crossing guards are not on duty? Ebrahim Kebe, Timothy Keith, Kevin Rodriguez, Dashane Santana, Moses Englender, Andrew Ramirez, Aniya Williams, Joshua Ganzfried, Max Mendez, Axel Pablo, Diego Martinez, Hayley Ng — all children killed by city motorists. In none of these cases was the driver known to have been charged for taking a child’s life.

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NYPD and Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance are reportedly targeting a crossing guard for her supposed role in the death of 6-year-old Amar Diarrassouba, who was killed by a truck driver in East Harlem Thursday morning. Meanwhile, a local businessman and community board member who waged a campaign against pedestrian refuges and protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenues has publicly pinned the blame on the victim’s 9-year-old brother.

Amar Diarrassouba

Robert Carroll was issued summonses for failure to yield and failure to exercise due care, according to the Post. Reports say Carroll was turning right from E. 117th Street onto First Avenue when he hit Amar with a rear tire of the tractor-trailer. Amar and older brother Youssouf were crossing First Avenue east to west, on their way to nearby P.S. 155.

Community Board 11 endorsed protected bike lanes and pedestrian refuges on First and Second Avenues from 96th to 125th Streets in September 2011, but rescinded its support two months later, when restaurant owners Frank Brija and Erik Mayor, who are also on the board, organized against the project.

Brija and Mayor, owners of Patsy’s Pizza and Milk Burger, respectively, said businesses were not contacted about the proposal for protected lanes and pedestrian islands, a claim refuted by DOT. They also said the safety measures would make traffic congestion worse and increase asthma rates.

The board ultimately endorsed the plan, which had broad community support, a second time, in March 2012. Construction was supposed to begin last spring, but was pushed back after the board waffled. While it’s impossible to know how the First Avenue redesign would have affected this crash, a narrower roadway may have saved Amar’s life by forcing Carroll to make a tighter, slower turn.

On Streetsblog and Twitter this morning, attorney Steve Vaccaro noted that, had the project proceeded as planned, the crash that killed Amar Diarrassouba might not have happened. In response, Mayor tweeted: “Steve you are pathetic to place blame on us. The child was being walked by his nine year old brother who did not pay attention.”

Erik Mayor, owner of Milk Burger and member of CB 11, waged a campaign against safety measures for the intersection where Amar was killed.

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A hit-and-run truck driver has escaped prosecution for killing a cyclist in Massachusetts after a grand jury failed to indict on vehicular homicide charges. Alexander Motsenigos, 41, was killed last August while riding his bike along a suburban road in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where he lived with his wife and six-year-old son. The driver never stopped.

Hit-and-run victim Alex Motsenigos. Image: Boston Herald

The hit-and-run death outraged the community and sparked a through police investigation. For a moment, it looked like the perpetrator might face criminal charges for his fatal recklessness behind the wheel.

According to the local police department: “Investigators spent over three months and countless hours identifying and interviewing witnesses, reviewing and processing substantial amounts of evidence that was recovered at the scene and on the truck involved in the crash, executed multiple search warrants, completed a systematic accident reconstruction which included consulting with experts in the trucking field to conduct a simulation of the crash.”

Authorities brought vehicular homicide charges against Dana McCoomb, a semi-truck driver with a long list of driving infractions. But earlier this month a grand jury failed to bring those charges against the accused killer.

This weekend the Boston Globe fired off an excellent editorial blaming “anti-cyclist bias” for the miscarriage of justice and even suggested judges should screen jurors for bias against cyclists the same way they do for racial and ethnic prejudices:

Many accidents involving bicycles and motor vehicles can be traced to road design, inclement weather, or attention lapse. But law enforcement traced Motsenigos’s death to truck driver Dana McCoomb, a man with an extensive history of driving infractions who fled the scene after striking the Wellesley cyclist from the side. Witness statements, video footage, and subsequent police analysis of the scene suggested that the deadly collision was more than an unavoidable accident.

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Luck, not law enforcement, is practically all that protects NYC pedestrians from reckless drivers. Photo: Post

Two pedestrians have been killed by curb-jumping drivers since Friday in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

On Friday evening at approximately 5:40, Martha Atwater was struck by the driver of a Honda truck after she stepped out of Bagel Cafe at the corner of Clinton Street and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights. The unidentified motorist was traveling north on Clinton Street when he “lost control” of the vehicle, mounted the sidewalk, and pinned Atwater against the building, according to reports. From the Post:

“She just came in to buy cookies. She looked happy, she was smiling,” said the cafe manager, Alauddin Shipun.

“She walked out. I heard a big bang and she was gone. Someone was trying to lift her head up and asking her, ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’”

The 53-year-old driver may have lost consciousness because of diabetes, a police source said.

He remained at the scene and has not been charged.

An ABC report says Atwater was conscious while pinned underneath the vehicle, and that a UPS man called her family from her cell phone. She was pronounced dead at Long Island College Hospital.

Atwater, 48, was an Emmy-winning writer and producer of children’s television shows. She was married and had two young daughters. ”The problem I have now is that I have two children,” said her husband, Tom Wallack. “One is 12 and the other is 16. They need support.”

Sunday morning at around 1:50 a collision between a cab driver and another motorist sent the cab onto the curb on Third Avenue at E. 27th Street in Kips Bay, fatally striking a woman as she stood on the sidewalk. From the Post:

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A motorist who hit another vehicle, jumped the curb, struck a 90-year-old man and crashed into Saks Fifth Avenue was not driving recklessly, according to the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance.

Dr. Mansoor Day, with the Rockettes. Photo via Daily News

Mansoor Day was taking his regular walk Wednesday morning when Richard Moussi, driving a Ford SUV with North Carolina plates, hit another vehicle, mounted the curb and struck the victim before hitting the building, according to reports.

The Daily News reports that Day, a well-known physician, is in critical condition with a broken neck, broken hip, and two broken legs.

Moussi was charged with having a fraudulent insurance card, according to the News and court records, but he was not charged for the crash, or for putting Dr. Day in the hospital. “Prosecutors said there was no evidence he was driving recklessly,” the News reported.

“There are accepted methods of estimating pre-crash vehicle speed based on the nature of the impact, the height of the curb, and other factors,” says attorney Steve Vaccaro. “Yes, a crash in and of itself is not evidence of reckless driving. But there is a lot more here than the mere fact of a crash. Was all the available evidence, including any eyewitness accounts, gathered and evaluated before prosecutors concluded that there was no evidence of recklessness?”

We asked Vance spokesperson Erin Duggan if it was determined whether Moussi was speeding or using a phone before the crash, but since he is facing a criminal charge, she said she could not discuss the case.

In 2012, 3,959 pedestrians and cyclists were wounded in Manhattan, and 41 were killed, according to NYPD. The majority of those crashes were not investigated by police, and none of the drivers involved in fatal crashes are known to have been charged for taking a life.

A hit-and-run driver may get as much as three years in jail, or no jail time at all, for striking and killing a Staten Island woman and injuring her grandson in Staten Island, under the terms of a plea deal with District Attorney Daniel Donovan.

For leaving Clara Almazo to die in the street, and wounding her 8-year-old grandson, Brian McGurk will get a maximum of three years in jail. 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 struck by Brian McGurk on Cary Avenue at Elizabeth Street. According to reports, Almazo pushed 8-year-old Brian Herrera-Ramirez out of the path of McGurk’s Ford SUV.

Court papers say McGurk was traveling “at a high rate of speed.” 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.”

The child suffered a broken leg. Almazo, who had 10 kids and 10 grandchildren, died shortly after being transported to the hospital.

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

McGurk refused a blood alcohol test, a police source told the Advance. A source quoted by the Post noted a known loophole in New York State law that gives motorists who have been drinking an incentive to flee the scene of a crash.

“Investigators are looking into anything that may have played a role, including speeding and alcohol,” a law-enforcement source said.

“You face tougher charges if you stay and you’re drunk.”

McGurk was charged with leaving the scene and criminally negligent homicide — a Class E felony, the least severe of all felony categories. According to court records, he pled guilty to leaving the scene, a D felony that carries a penalty of up to seven years. Donovan spokesperson Douglas Auer said McGurk will be sentenced “up to a maximum of one to three years in prison,” according to the Advance. A Class D felony also allows for no jail time, or probation. Sentencing is scheduled for March 21.

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A drunk driver who killed a Queens cyclist will be free to drive again in fewer than six years, under the terms of a plea agreement from District Attorney Richard Brown.

Alex Batista was charged with second degree manslaughter, driving under the influence and leaving the scene after he ran down Roger Hernandez on Greenpoint Avenue on the night of July 18, 2012. Brown told the Sunnyside Post that Batista was driving “at a high rate of speed” when he overtook Hernandez, bouncing the victim off the windshield of his car and nearly striking several pedestrians. Police found Batista laying on a sidewalk after he crashed into a building 10 blocks away. He was also charged with disorderly conduct for being uncooperative and approaching an officer “in a threatening manner.”

Hernandez, a 37-year-old handyman who was reportedly carrying a bouquet of flowers on his bike, died at the scene.

Said Brown, last July: ”This defendant’s decision to get behind the wheel of a car while allegedly intoxicated is incomprehensible and cost an innocent young man his life. Drinking and driving is never a good idea — and all too often has deadly consequences.”

Batista could have gotten up to 15 years in jail on the manslaughter charge. On Monday he pled guilty to a top charge of assault — a D felony, the second-least severe felony category — and misdemeanor DWI, according to court records. Batista will be sentenced to five years in prison. He will not be eligible for parole, according to a spokesperson for Brown’s office.

It would be reasonable to assume that, at the very least, a motorist who commits such a wanton act of deadly violence would forfeit his driving privileges for life. But according to the Post, Batista’s license will be suspended for just six months upon the completion of his jail sentence. After three years, he will be permitted to drive without an ignition interlock device.

Alex Batista is but the latest killer motorist to benefit from the largesse of DA Brown and New York’s forgiving traffic justice system.

In another deal brokered by Brown’s office, Kent Lowrie pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received five years probation, a $1,000 fine, and a six-month license revocation for hitting 6-year-old Zhaneya Butcher in Jamaica. According to reports, prosecutors feared Lowrie was not drunk enough to get a manslaughter conviction.

Last December, Demitrios Matsoukatidis received probation for killing Ditmars senior Lizardo Aldama. Brown’s office reported that Matsoukatidis had a blood alcohol content of .16, twice the legal limit for driving. Like Batista, he was charged with second degree manslaughter and DWI. Our query to Brown’s office concerning the Matsoukatidis plea bargain was not returned.