wow Gritiq,getting hits on your blog plugging it off a dead pregnant woman. feels good huh,maybe now you should get those banner ads..

rocknrope has the right idea....right in the vice.

Maybe 'Gritiq' should stop plugging his poorly-formatted blog and try and make better strawmen than 'what are you saying Jen, all drunk people are murderers?!'

If you want evidence of drunkenness impairing judgment, reason, coordination and leading to violence, I need only remind you of...I don't know, human history? Assuming Brown isn't a cold-blooded sociopath the fact that he just ambled out of his van and walked away seems to indicate he wasn't thinking straight and (gasp) perhaps his judgment was clouded! Crazy, I know.

r.i.p. may she and her family find peace and reunite someday.

minorities should not be driving, end of story.

endemic indeed.

I blame GTA4.

And he's only being charged with DWI and marijuana possession? Does New York City simply refuse to charge people with vehicular manslaughter? That's absurd and infuriating.

He's been charged with manslaughter too, according to more recent reports.

If he wasn't drunk? No, he'd likely have been in more control of the van.

I work and live within a block from where this accident took place and I'm totally freaked out and pissed off about this story. Everyone involved in this story needs to go after the supermarket and needs to make sure that the city does what it's supposed to do - serve justice.

I wonder if this means anything, but they shut down online ordering.

Dear Gristedes Customers,

Gristedes wishes to inform you that we have suspended our provision for on-line ordering and delivery.

As always, be assured of our continued commitment to provide you with the finest of products at the very best of prices at any one of our stores.

If we can be of assistance in meeting your specialty item needs, please email us at:

customerservice@gristedes.com

Sincerely,

Gristedes Supermarkets of New York

You know that if he hadn't been drunk and had simply been harrassing the women this would have been deemed an "accident" and he'd be off with a ticket at most.

I know, but a small part of me wonders if he would have accelerated into them if he weren't drunk. It's just a horrible, horrible story.

Yeah you‘re right Jen - I myself never murder anyone when I’m sober. But I kill oodles of folks when I’m drunk. You know how it is - I mean how many people have you offed after a few pints? I imagine you’ve probably lost count.

http://qritiq.wordpress.com

I agree with Peter's comment. Gristede's has got some of the meanest, angriest incompetents in this city working in their (ridiculously overpriced) stores. I have always figured it's because they treat staff so poorly that they can't keep anyone who could find a job elsewhere. Maybe putting a drunken multiple offender behind the wheel of a van to kill someone will be the end of them.

How much worse can a story get? How much worse can a person be to do what Brown did with that van? This is straight up murder -two counts. And yeah, Gristedes is in for a devastating hit.

I suppose something good could come out of this ... maybe it will turn out that Gristedes's insurance policy had been canceled, and the damages award puts the company out of business. We can only hope.

Has the mother of the driver told the press what a nice boy Keston is yet?

Nope, but the sister did: (2nd page of the nydailynews story)

"He's about to get married in June," said the sister, who gave her name as Ms. Jones and denied her brother had been drinking. "He was family-oriented. It was always all about the family."

I'm sick to death of family members denying facts of the story. How do you know if he was or wasn't drinking? If the cops arrested him he must have been drunk because otherwise they would have stated this was an accident and left it at that.

yeah, family oriented and alcohol don't go together AT ALL??!!! Idiots. And the leering/whistling out of the car harassing these women is soooo family oriented.

He will get his ass whipped in jail BIG TIME.

Since I was struck by an SUV last April, I have noticed how frequently pedestrians get hit in NYC. This is a particularly tragic case, but I think there is a more widespread and endemic problem to be addressed... it's actually crazy that there isn't more of a public outcry. There need to be real consequences for reckless driving in our city!

People drive like idiots here -- it almost seems like they think it's a video game, when in fact people's lives are at risk. I had a best-case scenario (the driver stopped and gave me her insurance info, I survived) and even so have spent the better part of this last year battling with insurance companies and lawyers, and am going in for my second knee surgery in a couple of weeks. And mind you, I was crossing the street in the crosswalk, with the light. The woman killed yesterday (like the children in Chinatown) were actually ON THE SIDEWALK!

The woman who hit me walked away with nothing but higher insurance premiums, while my knee is pretty much permanently screwed up. It seems really petty to complain about that in the face of this recent tragedy, but I think there needs to be municipal and policy action on these kinds of incidents in general in order to decrease their frequency. Right now the whole thing is the province of lawyers, notorious bottom-feeders who get their cut and don't do much beyond the bare minimum for it.

Anyone know where to find good statistics about pedestrian-motor vehicle accidents in NY? Pedestrian advocacy groups?