A charter bus driver was arrested in Lower Manhattan Thursday night after police say he struck and killed a pedestrian in the crosswalk.
According to the NYPD, at around 5:30 p.m., 28-year-old Kimberly Greer was walking north across Leonard Street at the intersection of Centre Street when Xi Chen drove his bus into the intersection and tried to turn left on Leonard Street at the same time, striking Greer with the rear of the bus.
#BREAKING Authorities say a woman was hit by a charter bus at Leonard and Centre St. in lower Manhattan. Stay with @NY1 for updates. pic.twitter.com/2Yk9rVjww7
— Justine Re (@JustineReTV) December 21, 2018
Greer, who lived in Melville, New York, died at New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital. According to a wedding announcement in the Times, Greer was a law clerk for a federal magistrate judge and taught at Fordam Law school; she married Michael Singer last month.
Chen, 50, was charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care, a misdemeanor and a violation, respectively.
Jian Jiang, a representative from Chen's Massachusetts-based bus company, NYC Style Limo, told Gothamist that the bus was heading to North Carolina and then Georgia, and said that the police were still investigating the crash.
Federal transportation records show that the company has no recorded crashes in the last two years.
"We have a clean record," Jiang said.
Greer is the fourth pedestrian killed on New York City streets this week, and one other driver aside from Chen was charged in their death. While overall traffic fatalities have fallen in 2018, pedestrian deaths have seen a slight increase since last year, from 104 to 108.
“It’s related to the time of year in large measure—days being darker, cold weather, people are trying to move along and are bundled up and can’t see as much,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press conference yesterday. “My message to all New Yorkers is to please keep special care on our streets this time of year.”