The driver of a stolen sport-utility vehicle killed a pedestrian and injured her husband and another driver in a crash in Canarsie on Sunday afternoon, then fled the scene. Police said the man behind the wheel of a Toyota 4Runner crashed into a sedan at the intersection of East 94th Street and Avenue K at around 12:45 p.m. "at a high rate of speed." From there, the driver veered into Chooi Tan, 51, and her 57-year-old husband, who witnesses said were standing on the corner.
The SUV came to a stop against a wall in front of a house. A resident of that house told the Daily News she saw the driver and his passenger run from the car.
"The injured woman was bleeding from the mouth and ears," she said.
She continued:
A guy was saying, ‘Help! Help! Help!’ I called 911. I told them there was somebody on the ground due to an accident. They were trying to have me explain. I said, ‘I can’t explain. Just send an ambulance.’ It was sad.
Paramedics transported Tan and her husband to Brookdale Hospital along with the 20-year-old man driving the sedan. Tan's husband is in stable condition, and the 20-year-old driver suffered only minor injuries, according to police.
The hit-and-run driver also crashed into a parked SUV. The owner, Greg Floyd, told the tabloid that the culprits ran a stop sign. "They were teenagers, out for a joyride," he said. "I hope justice prevails and I hope they find them. Time will tell."
Police brought dogs to the neighborhood on Sunday night to try to track the suspects. The SUV was reported stolen on Friday within a nearby police precinct covering Flatbush and East Flatbush.
The crash was the second fatal one of the weekend. On Saturday evening, Elizabeth Wimmer, 58, died after being struck by another driver in the Bronx's Woodlawn Heights neighborhood. Police say that Wimmer was driving north on Webster Avenue at East 233rd Street at 7:47 p.m., when the driver of a Honda CRV traveling in the opposite direction veered across the double yellow lines and crashed into her. Wimmer had two children in the car with her.
Paramedics drove Wimmer to North Central Bronx Hospital, and doctors there pronounced her dead. The children, ages 5 and 10, were taken to Jacobi Hospital along with the other driver, all in stable condition. Pix11 reports that the kids are Wimmer's granddaughters. The surviving driver has not been charged, though officers are still investigating, according to an NYPD spokesman.
The busy northern Bronx intersection is at a corner of Woodlawn Cemetery, along a truck route, and more than a mile from the next stoplight to the south on Webster Avenue. Police statistics show that the intersection is also crash-prone: it was the scene of 59 collisions in 2015, which left 12 people injured, including 2 pedestrians, 1 cyclist, and 9 motor vehicle occupants. The Canarsie crash scene, by contrast, is in a residential area, where two-lane, two-direction Avenue K meets the one-lane one-way East 94th Street, with a stop sign on East 94th. The intersection was the scene of four crashes last year, none of which resulted in injuries.
