Streetsblog New York City

A pedestrian and a cyclist are dead after a series of crashes in Brooklyn and the Bronx in which motorists also injured five other people. Three of the victims were teenagers. One crash left two young boys in critical condition. No charges are known to have been filed by NYPD or DAs Charles Hynes and Robert Johnson.

On Friday afternoon, 16-year-old Zuleimi Torres was one of three people struck by the driver of an SUV on the Grand Concourse near Mt. Eden Parkway. From NY1:

Eyewitnesses said the car was going erratically down Grand Concourse, hit one pedestrian and then kept going and hit the other two pedestrians.

“He didn’t stop, he hit the first person, he did not stop. He just keep going and then we see the second one again got hit. We said, ‘Oh!’” a bystander said.

An off-duty officer arrested the driver as he tried to leave the car, but a breathalyzer test showed that the driver had no blood alcohol content.

Torres suffered a brain injury and died at St. Barnabas Hospital. Her friend, also 16, and the third victim, a 51-year-old woman, were hospitalized in stable condition.

Citing anonymous police sources, the Post reports that the driver “is not suspected of a crime,” and a “medical condition may have contributed” to the crash. ”Sources say the driver has a mental condition,” according to News 12. “Investigators say the driver will not face charges.”

In another crash early Sunday, an unidentified cyclist was killed by a livery cab driver in Crown Heights. From the Post:

Read more…

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.

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.

Read more…

NYPD has reportedly changed its story about what happened to Tamon Robinson, the man who suffered fatal injuries when he was chased by officers in a police cruiser through a housing complex in Brooklyn. Whereas witnesses said police ran Robinson over, NYPD now claims the victim killed himself by running into the police cruiser, which wasn’t moving.

Meanwhile, the Daily News reports that, a year after the crash, District Attorney Charles Hynes has yet to decide whether to bring the case to a grand jury.

Tamon Robinson, 27, was loading paving stones into an SUV at Bayview Houses in Canarsie on April 12, 2012, when according to press accounts he was chased by officers who believed he was stealing the bricks. From a Times story published a week later, after Robinson had died: “Mr. Robinson ran toward his building, but a police car hit him before he reached it, according to a police report about the events.”

The Times said the Internal Affairs Bureau was investigating Robinson’s death.

Contrary to the initial NYPD account, on Saturday the Daily News reported that the official NYPD report claims “the police car was stopped on a footpath outside the Bayview Houses last April when Robinson ‘did run into’ the vehicle, causing him to fall backward and strike his head.”

This story would strain credulity even without conflicting reports from people who saw the crash. DNAinfo reported that, according to witnesses, “police at the scene pulled Robinson from under the car, yelling ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ before bouncing him off the hood of the car.”

The Daily News says an independent expert has been hired by Hynes’s office to reconstruct the crash. “We can’t make a decision until we have the final report,” said a Hynes spokesperson.

NYPD sent Robinson’s family a bill for damage to the cruiser, but rescinded it after the media picked up the story.

In another instance of NYPD using a police car as a deadly weapon, last August officers rammed a dirt bike in the Bronx, killing the bike’s operator and injuring a passenger. The Daily News notes that the NYPD Patrol Guide “prohibits ‘ramming’ in an attempt to stop a vehicle.”

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.

Other than driver speed, it’s still not clear what caused the March 30 crash, which put at least three others in the hospital. The victims included Denim’s mother, Wendy McLean, who remains in a coma.

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.

Read more…

A motorist jumped the curb and slammed into a bus stop and scaffolding in East Flatbush on Saturday, striking up to 10 pedestrians. Four people were hospitalized in critical condition, including a woman and her young son. According to the Post, Denim McLean, whose age has been reported as 2 and 3, is brain dead.

Within hours NYPD told the media that charges were unlikely, despite witness accounts that the driver was speeding.

The crash occurred in the 67th Precinct, where at least three pedestrians have died in traffic in the last five months, and where police issued just 45 speeding tickets in 2012 — an average of one every eight days.

Details vary somewhat as to how the crash unfolded. The Times reported that, according to NYPD, the driver was northbound on Utica Avenue near Church Avenue at around 6:50 p.m. when she swerved to avoid another vehicle. Police told DNAinfo that the driver, 48, “accidentally” hit the accelerator instead of the brake as she approached a red light at Utica and Church: “As she swerved to avoid colliding with the traffic around her, the vehicle jumped onto the sidewalk, hitting up to nine pedestrians, police said.”

From the Post:

Witnesses saw the boy [Denim McLean] facedown and unconscious near a pile of shattered glass, blood gushing from his tiny head.

“That little baby looked dead,” said Lawrence Nicholas, who rushed over from a nearby hair salon.

“When I looked in the baby’s eyes, I never saw any life. I started to cry,” said Paris Rainey, 30.

Good Samaritans tried to revive the injured boy.

“I ran outside and jumped over the car. I tried to do CPR on the baby,” said Lenox Blocker, 40. “The baby wasn’t even winking.”

“They said the lady who hit them must have fainted or did something, because she didn’t know what happened,” said the boy’s aunt, Dierdra McCorkle, 51.

The Post says Wendy McLean, 37, is semi-comatose and does not know of her son’s condition. Another female victim was pinned to a building, and one was an 86-year-old man, according to the Post.

Witnesses told the Daily News that the unnamed driver, who was hospitalized along with a passenger, was speeding before the crash. That she jumped a curb and hit multiple people with a vehicle is not in dispute. Nevertheless, NYPD apparently concluded its work with characteristic haste. As early as 10:27 p.m. Saturday, less than four hours after the incident, the Post reported: “Police do not believe the crash was a crime.” A Post follow-up published this morning reads: “Cops said the driver passed a breath-alcohol test and would not be charged.”

Read more…

A woman was struck and killed by a driver who jumped the curb and drove across a field near the Bronx Botanical Garden last weekend.

Sook-Ja Kim, 63, was in a wide grassy median that serves as a park area on Mosholu Parkway near Bainbridge Avenue when she was hit from behind by a motorist at around 3:45 p.m. on Sunday, March 17.

NYPD told the media that the driver, a 22-year-old man whose name was not released, had a seizure and “lost control” of the Honda sedan he was driving.

“I saw the car cross the highway and driving in the wrong direction. He was going like 100 miles-per-hour, yes. The guy was sick or something was wrong with the young driver,” said witness Marcelino Hernandez to the Norwood News, which published a thorough account of the crash.

The story says that on Saturday “a large group of children” played football on the field where Kim was struck.

“I cross here all the time with my kids,” Hernandez said about the area of the parkway at Bainbridge Avenue. “It’s not safe, you’re not suppose to play there. Nobody should be there. This roadway is very dangerous.”

Having learned that there was speculation that the driver had an epileptic seizure, Hernandez said he felt new laws should be created for drivers who take medication when they shouldn’t, or drivers who don’t take medication when they should.

Kim died at St. Barnabas Hospital. No charges were filed against the driver, and no summonses were issued.

Sook-Ja Kim was at least the third NYC pedestrian killed by a curb-jumping motorist in the last month. Martha Atwater was struck outside a shop in Cobble Hill by a driver who police said had a diabetic seizure. An unidentified woman was hit on a sidewalk in Kips Bay after two drivers collided on Third Avenue. No charges were filed for either of those deaths.

Read more…

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:

Read more…

A woman was killed by a bus driver in Brooklyn this morning. Despite an account from the victim’s husband that the driver blew a stop sign, NYPD has already declared that “No criminality is suspected.”

At around 7:15 a.m., Lorraine Ferguson, 48, was crossing at Avenue K and 105th Street in Canarsie to catch the BM2 when the driver of a bus carrying disabled children rounded the corner and ran her over, according to the Post.

“I saw the woman under the bus. Her head was smashed,” said Tanzania Martin, 22. “She was totally gone. The bus driver never came out. I had to go in and ask, are you okay? He said yes.”

Police say no criminality is suspected and the driver stayed on the scene, but the investigation is ongoing.

“Had he stopped for one second, my wife would still be alive,” [Michael] Ferguson said. “My wife didn’t have a chance.”

“No criminality suspected” is NYPD’s way of saying that the driver was not intoxicated and did not flee the scene — and therefore will almost certainly face no criminal charges, and has a good chance of driving away without as much as a summons for careless driving.

It is almost unheard of for police to file charges against a driver who kills a pedestrian or cyclist unless they do so at the time of the crash. Even a driver who appears to have broken at least two laws — running a stop sign and failing to yield — can expect to be cleared of wrongdoing on the spot.

Like his colleagues in the other four boroughs, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes virtually never charges a killer motorist with a crime unless alcohol or drugs are involved, though exceptions may be made when the perpetrator leaves the scene.

This fatal crash occurred in the 69th Precinct. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to Deputy Inspector George Fitzgibbon, the commanding officer, go to the next precinct community council meeting. The 69th Precinct council meetings happen at 8 p.m. on the last Tuesday of the month at the precinct, 9720 Foster Avenue, or St. Alban’s Church, 9408 Farragut Road. Call 718-257-6205 for information.

The City Council district where Lorraine Ferguson was killed is represented by Charles Barron, who has been supportive of new car-free space for his constituents. To encourage Barron to take action to improve street safety in his district and citywide, contact him at 212-788-6957, or wake up his Twitter feed @CharlesBarron12.

An unlicensed driver who killed a 14-year-old child in Brooklyn will spend six months in jail and lose his license for a year.

Paul O. Griffin was driving a Ford work van on the evening of January 4, 2012, when he struck Davonte Jeffers on Flatlands Avenue. Griffin sped from the scene and refused a breath test when caught by police, according to the Daily News.

Jeffers was on an errand for his mother when he was hit, the News reported. He died at Kings County Hospital.

Police told the News that additional charges were pending, but Griffin was charged by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes only with aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, a class D felony. He was not charged with manslaughter or homicide for killing Davonte Jeffers.

Facing up to seven years in jail, on November 19 Griffin was sentenced to six months, with five years probation, and fined $2000, according to court records. His license was revoked for one year.

It is not known if or when Griffin was administered an alcohol test, but — given prosecutors’ unwillingness to charge sober motorists for taking a life — often the difference between a manslaughter charge and a slap on the wrist, or no criminal charges at all, is state law that permits suspected drunk drivers to withhold crucial blood evidence.

This fatal crash occurred in the 63rd Precinct. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to Captain John Rowell, the commanding officer, go to the next precinct community council meeting. The 63rd Precinct council meetings happen at 8 p.m. on the fourth Wednesday of the month at Kings Plaza Mall Community Room. Call 718-258-4444 for information.

The City Council district where Davonte Jeffers was killed is represented by Lew Fidler. To encourage Fidler to take action to improve street safety in his district and citywide, contact him at 212-788-7286 or LFidler@council.nyc.gov.

Two seniors have been killed by motorists in Manhattan and Brooklyn since Saturday. Both crashes were apparently precipitated by careless driving or negligence, according to reports, and both drivers were exonerated by NYPD.

Yesterday afternoon, 65-year-old Pelagia Zingatan was struck by a yellow cab driver at 69th Street and First Avenue. From the Post:

Zingtapan had been returning from lunch with a friend when the cabbie tore westbound across 69th Street, honking his horn, witnesses said.

They said the driver was trying to make the yellow light. Pedestrians including Zingtapan were already crossing 69th.

Zingtapan’s companion jumped out of the way, but she “froze” in the middle of the crosswalk, witnesses said.

After she was “dragged halfway down the block,” according to the Post, passersby lifted the cab off Zingatan and administered aid. She died at Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Though witnesses quoted by the Post and the Daily News said the cab driver was gunning for the light, NYPD told DNAinfo that police “do not expect any foul play,” and do not know if he was speeding. Cops told the Post and the News that they don’t expect to file charges.

On Saturday night, Gitzella Katz, a 92-year-old Auschwitz survivor, was walking with her daughter Judy Fisher on Clymer Street in Williamsburg when they were hit by a 26-year-old man who was backing his SUV toward a parking spot. Fisher was hospitalized in stable condition. Katz died from a brain hemorrhage. The Post reports:

“They were just laying there, not moving. They were walking together. I saw them fall backward,” Pessie Gelb, 44, said.

Another witness, Christopher Wallace, heard the victims’ horrifying screams just before the accident.

The driver was not charged.

Gitzella Katz was the 34th pedestrian or cyclist known killed in Brooklyn this year. Of those 34 crashes, one sober driver is known to have been charged by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes for causing a death.

Pelagia Zingatan was the 26th pedestrian or cyclist known killed in Manhattan in 2012. To date, no motorists are known to have been charged by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance for killing a pedestrian or cyclist this year.