Results tagged “killed”

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.