Epileptic Cab Driver on Trial for Murder for Bronx Sidewalk Killings
The driver of a green cab who killed a child and a man on a Bronx sidewalk last year was charged with murder.
The Bronx district attorney’s office said Emilio Garcia was not taking his epilepsy medication when he fatally struck 5-year-old Tierre Clark and 25-year-old Kadeem Brown on the Grand Concourse at E. 170th Street on March 20, 2015.
Press accounts published after the crash said Clark injured two other people. One of the injured victims was reportedly a 55-year-old man. The other was Sanequa Howe, Tierre’s mother, who suffered bone fractures.
“When we are waiting for the bus, she gave me a kiss and she was dancing around, she never saw it coming,” Howe told WABC.
Gothamist reported that, according to the DA’s office, Garcia was aware of his epilepsy and had been in another crash, causing injuries to a second driver, four months before Tierre and Brown were killed.
The DA’s office told Streetsblog last October that Garcia was charged with manslaughter and homicide. According to court records, current charges against Garcia are two counts of murder, one count of assault (a class D felony), two counts of negligent homicide (a class E felony), and one misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment.
The case was originally brought by former district attorney Robert Johnson, who held the post for 27 years before stepping down at the end of 2015 to become a New York Supreme Court judge. He was succeeded by Darcel Clark.
In 2008 Auvryn Scarlett killed two Manhattan tourists after he went off his medication and had a seizure while at the wheel of a private garbage truck. Scarlett was convicted of murder, but an appeals court reduced the conviction to manslaughter.
Garcia has been in jail since last October and is currently on trial, court records say.
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