[Update: According to Cy Vance's office, prosecutors are investigating this crash. We'll have another post shortly.]
Reports say the cab driver who maimed a pedestrian in Midtown this morning was arguing with a bike messenger, whom he rammed with his cab before driving 15 to 20 feet on the sidewalk and severing a woman's leg, but he probably won't be charged with a crime.
The most seriously injured victim was identified by the Post and the Wall Street Journal as Sian Green, a tourist from England, whose age was reported as 22 and 23. Multiple reports say both her legs were mangled, with one severed below the knee. Green reportedly underwent surgery at Bellevue Hospital, where FDNY told us she was taken this morning.
The cyclist, who did not give his name, told reporters he was riding alongside the cab when the driver, attempting to make a left turn from Sixth Avenue onto 49th Street, became impatient. Here's the cyclist as quoted by the Daily News:
“I told him to stop because I’m trying to go forward and people are crossing,” the cyclist said. “He loses his patience. He gets angry. He accelerates. Hits me.”
Here is the cyclist's account in the Post:
"The hood of his car was so close to me, I could touch it. I told him to stop, he gets angry, he honks his horn, and he accelerates, and that’s it -- I’m on the hood of the car, and the woman is under his car. He was in the bike lane, and he wanted to turn, but he didn’t want to wait. ... I told him to calm down. ... When I moved forward, that’s when he accelerated because I couldn’t escape him."
Photos from the scene show the cyclist leaning against a police cruiser with a bandaged knee, and a bike with a bent rear wheel.
"We were crossing right in the middle of the crosswalk -- we had the crossing signal -- and as we were crossing with other pedestrians, the cab started to pull into the crosswalk," said Jeffrey Hayes, of Massachusetts, to Fox News. "[There] was a man riding along this way on his bicycle with a backpack and he got picked up by the cabbie and was thrown up on the hood and up on his windshield. The cab really accelerated at a great speed. We couldn't believe it. It smashed into the barrier here. There was a woman -- maybe a few women -- that were standing there. It just nailed her."
The Post identified the cab driver as Mohammed Himon, who, despite undisputed accounts from multiple witnesses who say he caused this violent and life-altering crash, sources said "was likely to be slapped with multiple summonses ... but not criminally charged." Unnamed sources told DNAinfo Himon "has a clean driving record."
A photo from the scene shows police directing motorists through red lights on Sixth Avenue after the crash. Wrote Streetsblog reader Clarke:
Just passed the scene ... NYPD everywhere, waving traffic on 6th Ave through red lights as pedestrians are trying to cross, cabs failing to yield at crosswalks in front of cops just standing on the scene, cars blocking crosswalk on red light in front of cops. That's why this story has no shock value at all ... you can break traffic law literally in front of police officers and not even face a verbal warning.
