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NYPD finds trucker behind fatal Brooklyn hit-and-run, but cops decline to make arrest
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Sep 21, 2025
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By
Catalina Gonella
Published Sep 21, 2025
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An NYPD spokesperson on Sunday said police found the hit-and-run truck driver who killed a 69-year-old woman with a tractor-trailer on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn early Friday, but said cops didn’t arrest him because he said he did not know he struck the woman.
Police identified the victim as Deborah Koonce, and said investigators believed she was panhandling on the street near Schenectady Avenue just before 5:20 a.m. when she was struck by the 18-wheeler heading eastbound. Koonce, whose address was listed as a supportive housing facility a block away from the crash, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The morning she was killed, the NYPD said officers were scanning surveillance footage to find the driver. On Sunday, police said officers tracked down the truck and the driver about 50 miles away in Mine Hill, N.J., “a short time” after the crash. An NYPD spokesperson said the driver was not charged, but said the investigation into the crash was ongoing.
Police said the driver is a 50-year-old man and declined to provide his name.
Trucks are not permitted on Eastern Parkway, and big rigs the size of the one that killed Koonce are only allowed to travel through New York City on a handful of expressways. NYPD representatives did not say whether the trucker would be charged or penalized for driving on the parkway.
Koonce’s daughter set up a GoFundMe looking to raise money to cover the cost of her mother’s funeral. She wrote on the website that her mother was living in an “outpatient/inpatient facility, and they let her go outside by herself with no one accompanying her” before she was struck.
Koonce was the second pedestrian killed on Eastern Parkway this year, city data shows.
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Catalina Gonella
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