A 9-year-old girl and a bicyclist were killed yesterday in separate accidents within hours of each other in Queens (NYC).
The minor was struck by a pickup truck around 5:50 p.m. in Astoria, and the bicyclist by an NYPD patrol car that collided with another car in Far Rockaway around 9:30 p.m.
The girl was struck by a pickup truck driven by a woman traveling with three people on board. The Ford Explorer car was heading eastbound on Newtown Rd. in Astoria when it struck the victim near 45th St., police said.
“I heard the screams. I got out, and the baby was lying in the middle of the street bleeding,” a nearby resident who preferred not to be identified told the Daily News. “Her mother overcame her crying. It was terrible, just terrible. Poor thing.”
The 46-year-old driver immediately stopped the vehicle, said the witness, who called 911. “It was an accident,” said a passenger in the car who got out at the scene. “We didn’t see them.”
Paramedics took the girl to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where she was pronounced dead, police said. Also in the car were the driver’s son and two other adult passengers. No arrests had been made in the case as of last night.
A few hours later, an adult female bicyclist was fatally struck in a collision between an NYPD patrol van and a black Honda sedan in the Beach Channel Mall parking lot.
The woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Her name and age were not immediately available. The Beach Channel Shopping Center includes a supermarket, cell phone store, and other businesses. The accident apparently occurred across Beach Channel Drive from Bayswater Park.
Earlier this week, according to NYPD, a man with a mental history purposely ran over several people by driving his rented U-Haul van up several sidewalks in Brooklyn. One of the victims died hours later on Monday night.
In addition to gun violence, traffic accidents are another major challenge for Mayor Eric Adams. This happens despite “Vision Zero,” a road safety plan created in 2014 by then-new Mayor Bill de Blasio, who promised to make the city safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists, with a goal of zero fatalities by 2024.
2022 was a grim year on New York’s asphalt in all five boroughs. From January 1 to July 31, some 150 people died in road crashes, according to the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT). Particularly there was a 129% increase in hit-and-run incidents.
New York City had already experienced a 35% increase in traffic accidents in April, NYPD warned. At the end of that month, there was a tragic streak of an average of one person killed by hit-and-run each day.