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Woman Fatally Struck By Sanitation Truck Driver On Upper East Side
By
Miranda Katz
Published Mar 15, 2016
Modified Mar 15, 2016
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By
Miranda Katz
Published Mar 15, 2016
Modified Mar 15, 2016
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A 55-year-old woman was killed this morning by a sanitation truck driver who struck her while she was in the crosswalk.
Police said that at about 6 a.m. this morning, the woman was walking in the crosswalk at First Avenue and 92nd Street while the walk sign was on, and was hit by the truck, which was driven by an adult male making a left turn from 92nd onto First Avenue. She remained conscious and alert, though she was complaining of leg and wrist pain and had a deep cut on her forehead.
The woman was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where, just 20 minutes later, she was pronounced dead. Police said it wasn't immediately clear how that happened, as she seemed responsive at the scene, but that it may have been internal bleeding or the result of her head wound.
Police said that the driver remained at the scene, and that he has not been arrested or charged with anything yet. Under the city's Right of Way law, cops can charge drivers who kill or injure pedestrians. But even if this driver were charged, that's not a guarantee that he'd be prosecuted: in a similar case in 2014, in which an 86-year-old man was killed by a truck while walking in the crosswalk, the Manhattan DA dropped a Right of Way charge against the driver, whose attorney successfully argued that the driver couldn't see the victim.
Richie Gomez, a doorman at the Courtyard Marriott on 92nd and First, told the Post that the intersection is dangerous, and he's seen motorists strike a biker and a pedestrian there in the past, though neither of those incidents were fatal.
"You have to watch how you cross the street there," he said. "Once that light changes green they take off like its a race...The cars around that corner, they come flying."
According to the NYPD, the driver works for City Waste Services, one of the hundreds of private waste removal companies licensed to do trash pickup in New York. When reached by phone today, a representative at City Waste's Queens office said that "we have nothing to do with that...it's a traffic accident."
The victim has not yet been identified, pending the notification of her family.
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pedestrian fatalities
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Miranda Katz
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