New York City

Rally for Safer Streets Planned Following ‘Gruesome' Crashes in South Brooklyn

What to Know

  • Advocacy groups and elected officials will hold a rally calling for safer streets in Bay Ridge Sunday evening
  • The rally will kick off at 5 p.m. at 84th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway
  • An elderly woman was killed and a 10-year-old boy was critically injured in two separate crashes last week

A trio of advocacy groups and elected officials plan to hold a rally calling for safer streets in the wake of two “gruesome” crashes — one deadly — in Brooklyn last week.

The South Brooklyn Safe Streets Rally will kick off at 5 p.m. at 84th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, according to Transportation Alternatives, which is hosting the event along with Families for Safe Streets and B.R.A.K.E.S.

An 85-year-old woman was killed when a driver crashed into the car she and her 90-year-old husband were in as they left a car wash in Sheepshead Bay last week. Two days before that, a 10-year-old boy named Jobe Kan was critically injured when a driver struck him near 84th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway, according to Transportation Alternatives.

The rally comes a day after a group of family and friends held a vigil for a nine-year-old Giovanni Ampuero, who was hit and killed by a car while he and his mother crossed Northern Boulevard at 70th Street in Jackson Heights, Queens.

“Already this year, we have lost at least five children across New York City to traffic violence,” the group said. “If the rate of carnage keeps up, we will be on track to see as many children killed on New York City streets in 2018 as we saw in the previous two years combined.”

In Queens, community members said they want speeds reduced on Northern Boulevard after the deaths of several children over the past few years.

“I’m going to do whatever is necessary, as the father, to make sure my son didn’t die for no reason,” Giovanni’s father Raul Ampuero told NBC New York.

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