Driver Not Charged for Killing Scooter Rider in Crosswalk
Jinsheng Wu is dead — and no one has been held responsible.
On Friday morning, at around 11 a.m., a driver ran into and killed Wu as he rode an electric scooter — in the crosswalk and with the light, according to police — yet the driver was not charged.
“Investigation is ongoing,” an NYPD spokesman told Streetsblog on Monday — three days after the crash.
Here’s what we know: Cops say that a 2015 Freightliner truck was stopped at a red light at 73rd Street and 19th Avenue. When the light turned green, the driver of the truck turned right onto 19th Avenue and ran over the 65-year-old Wu, who, police added, “was riding an electric scooter heading westbound across 19th Avenue within the crosswalk.”
Police arrived to find Wu “unconscious and unresponsive … with severe trauma to the head and torso,” and Wu was dead by the time he arrived at Maimonides Medical Center. Cops said the driver remained at the crash site and was not charged.
NYPD officials have said they aggressively issue right-of-way law violations, but those tickets rarely lead to convictions. In the Bronx, there have been just seven right-of-way convictions since late 2015. In Manhattan, just 22 since 2014, according to both offices. DAs in Brooklyn and Queens did not get back to Streetsblog.
