Two pedestrians were killed and a third was injured in separate collisions in the span of seven hours over the weekend, and a driver has been charged in one of the deaths, authorities said Sunday.
The first death, in Queens, happened at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday when a 68-year-old man dashed into an intersection against the light and was hit by a car, police said. The driver tried to avoid the collision but hit the pedestrian, who was brought to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center and pronounced dead. The driver remained on the scene and has not been arrested, police said.
A few hours later, shortly before 1 a.m., an 88-year-old woman was crossing West 109th Street in the crosswalk and with a green light when she was hit by a yellow cab that had been traveling on Columbus Avenue, according to the NYPD. Luisa Rosario was brought to Mount Sinai St. Luke' s Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The driver, 73-year-old Salifu Abubkar, was arrested on a charge of failure to yield to a pedestrian; it wasn't immediately clear if he had a lawyer.
Then, at Broadway and East Houston Street at around 4:30 a.m., a man was hit by a commercial garbage truck and was taken to the hospital in critical condition, officials said. The man was expected to survive, and no arrests were anticipated, police said.
The collisions came as Mayor de Blasio celebrated the one-year anniversary of the city's 25 mph speed limit - part of the city's Vision Zero plan to protect pedestrians. The mayor's office has said the trend points to the project's success: There were 14 hit-and-run pedestrian fatalities from January through October of this year, down slightly from 22 all of last year and way down from the average 31.7 pedestrian fatalities before Vision Zero was launched with lower speed limits, more red-light cameras and a vow of tougher enforcement.
