In a sad turn of events earlier this week, a young mother was mistakenly shot and killed in the Bronx by one of her Facebook friends. Bolivia Beck, 21, was walking with her 21-year-old boyfriend, ex-con Joey Colon, when mutual friend Gary Davis encountered them Monday night at the Millbrook Houses in the South Bronx. He allegedly fired two shots in an apparent attempt to kill Colon, but instead hit Beck in the head. more ›

The off-duty NYPD officer who was killed earlier this week in a messy car accident in Long Island has been identified as Officer Fred Barraza. Barraza, who was assigned to the 110th Precinct in Elmhurst, was driving home from work around 2 a.m. Thursday morning with his cousin in the passenger seat when he swerved in front of another car, lost control, and careened into a tree. Investigators said Barraza was speeding at the time, but it hasn't been determined yet if he was drunk. The passenger, Jose Valdevenito, was ejected from his seat during the crash, and is being treated for serious head trauma at Nassau University Medical Center. more ›

An off-duty NYPD officer was killed in a messy car crash in Long Island early this morning. The officer, whose name has not been released to the public yet, and another man were apparently speeding in a black 1994 Honda Accord on Carmen Ave. in Westbury around 2 a.m. this morning. They lost control of the car while passing another car, jumped a curb, and wrapped around a tree. The officer was trapped in the mangled wreckage of the vehicle, and was pronounced dead at the hospital. more ›

The Bronx will be getting another ghost bike: This morning an unidentified woman was run over by a BX 17 bus heading southbound on Crotona Avenue just before 8:30 a.m. Witnesses say the 57-year-old cyclist, whose name is being withheld for now, rode into the path of the bus after getting doored or swerving to avoid a car door. "The bus was coming and the lady swerved to get out of the way of the car door," passenger Angel Otero tells the Daily News. "It happened so fast. Everybody got off the bus gasping and crying when they saw her." more ›

A 32-year-old man died on Saturday when he was struck by two cars on the Grand Central Parkway near the Jewel Avenue exit in Flushing, according to the Daily News. The victim — whose name has not yet been released — was struck at around 4:40 am by a 2002 Buick. "I was driving along...then all of a sudden I had a bump on the car," one of the drivers told the tabloid. "And I thought, 'Oh, my God! That looked looked like a body.'" Moments later, the victim was run over by a 2002 Dodge. "I thought it was a mannequin," said the driver of the Dodge. "[He] was already...on the ground when I hit him. What could I do?" Both of the drivers remained at the scene and were not charged. more ›

This is the man who was fatally run over by a southbound B train at the Central Park West and 110th St. station; his name was Shem Herman and he was the father of a 2-year-old son, Dylan. The 33-year-old Washington Heights man had jumped down onto the subway tracks to recover his iPod when he was killed by the oncoming train. Yesterday reporters tracked down his distraught wife and mother, so keep reading if you're not sad enough today. more ›

An unidentified man was fatally struck by a southbound B train last night around 7:30 at the Central Park West and 110th St. station. Witnesses told police the man, an Hispanic male from Washington Heights in his mid-30s, was engaged in an agitated cell phone conversation when he dropped his portable music device onto the tracks. One bystander says, "I saw a guy sitting on the stairs talking on his cellphone, then I saw him leaning over the tracks watching for a train to come, when, all of a sudden, he was nowhere to be found." more ›

There are conflicting reports about the cause of a taxi-on-pedestrian accident at 112th Street and Lexington Avenue in East Harlem yesterday afternoon, but this much is certain: 8-year-old Axel Pablo is dead, and the driver of the cab, Akim Saiful Alam, was released without charges. Witnesses and police tell the Daily News that Alam, turning left from Lex onto 112th, slammed into Pablo as he stopped to pick up his mother's cell phone while crossing the street. The impact knocked Pablo out of his shoes. more ›

The enraged driver whose appalling mile-long rampage through the Bronx Sunday left one father dead could be arraigned as early as today on multiple charges, including manslaughter, reckless endangerment, assault and child endangerment. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne tells the Times, "I know of no incident in which a motorist crashed into so many cars over so long a distance on city streets. It’s rare by any measure." more ›

Three pedestrians were killed by drivers in three separate accidents in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan yesterday, but there's one thing that ties the incidents together: As usual, none of the drivers were charged. In Harlem, 73-year-old great-grandmother Vivian Long, a retired teacher's aide, was crossing Amsterdam Avenue with her granddaughter when she was fatally struck by an Access-A-Ride vehicle. (For the record, Access-A-Ride drivers are the worst.) She died at St. Luke's Hospital. In Borough Park, 25-year-old Matvey Smolovich, who according to his relatives had mental problems, was run over by a mini school bus around 10 a.m. after stepping out from between parked cars 100 feet from the crosswalk. His father tells the Daily News, "He left the house without my permission... After this I don't care about anything. My life is ruined." The 55-year-old bus driver stayed at the scene, and the NYPD is investigating, but hasn't arrested anyone. Then in Flushing, Queens, the 19-year-old driver of a Nissan Altima killed a jogger who also stepped into the street from between parked cars. He was rushed to New York Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. more ›

Though his lawyer argues that a "vehicular malfunction" caused the crash that killed a pregnant woman on a midtown sidewalk in March, the van's driver admitted to police that he was drinking before the horrible accident. Keston Brown, 28, first told cops he'd only consumed two Bud Lights before getting behind the wheel, but six hours later he admitted to imbibing more than double that amount at an Upper West Side bar: "We stayed 30 to 40 minutes. I had about three or four bottles of Bud Light and one shot of Hennessey." But Brown maintains that he wasn't drunk, and that the van mysteriously "turned off" before he careened onto the sidewalk and killed Ysemny Ramos, who was two months pregnant. Police sources say that moments before the crash, Brown and his coworker in the passenger seat had been driving alongside Ramos and her friend, "shouting come-ons at the two women from his window before losing control of the delivery van." Yesterday Brown pleaded not guilty to vehicular homicide, manslaughter and assault charges, but a Supreme Court judge refused to lower his bail. more ›

The death of 8-year-old Alexander Toulouse, who was cycling with his father in Downtown Brooklyn on September 6th when a mail truck struck him while turning on Livingston Street, didn't come as a surprise to those familiar with the area, the Daily News reports. Michelle Dougherty, a Brooklyn Heights mother of three, calls the intersection "extremely dangerous. Last year I saw a boy who was hit by two cars." Transportation Alternatives spokesman Wiley Norvell agrees that it's "a bad corridor - it's a recipe for crashes and injuries unless something is done to reengineer the street." A DOT rep promises that engineers will now reevaluate the safety conditions there. And more details have emerged on the 50-year-old man who was killed by a school bus while riding his bike in Park Slope days after Toulouse's death: Jonathan Millstein was a lifelong New Yorker and father of two who ran a silkscreen shop with his wife in the East Village. more ›

50-year-old Jonathan Milstein was struck and killed by a school bus in Park Slope yesterday morning, the second cyclist fatality in Brooklyn in less than a week. (On Saturday, 8-year-old Alexander Toulouse was fatally struck by a mail truck downtown.) The Brooklyn Paper reports that Milstein was riding west on President Street and was trying to make the light at Eighth Avenue, a block from Prospect Park, when the collision occurred. No passengers were on the bus, and no charges filed against the driver, who is reportedly "extremely shaken." Milstein was pronounced DOA at nearby New York Methodist Hospital. A spokesman for Transportation Alternatives told the Brooklyn Eagle that Eighth Avenue is “problematic” because of its proximity to the park and because its one-way traffic and infrequent stop lights seem to encourage speeding. more ›

A Shih Tzu named Zahara lost its life last September because a man was angry at his girlfriend and their relationship, and the authorities have finally caught up with him. WNBC reports that 27-year-old Sherman Haynes "threw his girlfriend's small dog out his third-floor window, killing the defenseless animal," yelling, "You need your dog?" to his girlfriend, 25-year-old Farah Benoit. The couple were at his East 93rd Street apartment in Brooklyn, where he also threw Benoit's furniture out prior to the dog, who suffered broken legs, collapsed lungs and internal bleeding from the fall and was pronounced dead shortly after. This morning the dog's killer was finally arrested and charged with felony animal cruelty, reckless endangerment and criminal mischief--he had been avoiding the ASPCA for a year. more ›

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A family walking along the side of the road in Queens was struck by a car that witnesses claimed was doing 90 m.p.h. After plowing into the family, which included an infant, the driver continued on, perhaps neglecting to notice the baby that was hurled into the air and a the male friend of the mother who was killed. more ›

Even though Tom Otterness, who just installed his newest creation in DUMBO, cheers up commuting New Yorkers underground...he has a dark past that wouldn't make anyone smile. The artist, in short, shot a dog (that he adopted) for the sake of "art" -- something he did, and filmed, 20 years ago. more ›

The Justice Department is denying federal benefits to the families of the two auxiliary police officers who were brutally killed by a marauding gunman in the West Village last year. more ›