Another pedestrian is dead in an already bloody week in an already very bloody year — and, yet again, the truck driver who killed her inside a marked crosswalk has not been charged.
Police say that 31-year-old Firstess Earth Crosby died on Monday as a result of severe injuries she suffered on Feb. 28 when a truck driver ran over her inside a marked crosswalk near Ninth Avenue and W. 17th Street in Manhattan. The 28-year-old driver of the 2016 Peterbilt truck had been heading south on Ninth Avenue when he made a right turn onto 17th Street and “struck the pedestrian while in the crosswalk with the front bumper.”
Crosby fell to the ground, and the driver again ran over her with “the rear wheels of the vehicle,” police said.
Oddly, the driver was not issued summonses at the scene, and has not since been charged in relation to Crosby's death. Police declined to answer several questions about the driver, including why he was traveling off a truck route or whether he was on his phone or was distracted by loud music or by another passenger inside the car. The department’s Collision Investigation Squad is still investigating the five-month-old incident.
Crosby, who lived very close to where she was killed, had been taken to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition, but she never left the medical center. She died Monday.
Crosby was the 117th person killed on New York roadways this year and the 59th pedestrian, according to Department of Transportation data through July 23 — fatalities that are up 16 percent and 7 percent respectively. Since last June, there have been 19 crashes at the intersection of Ninth Avenue and W. 17th Street, resulting in one cyclist injury and two pedestrian injuries. Construction vehicles and trucks are common in the area, though 17th Street is not a marked truck route.
Crosby’s death came one day before two cyclists were killed, one in Greenpoint and one in Staten Island. Those two crashes raised the death toll for cyclists to 17 for the year — seven more than were killed all of last year. At this point last year, eight cyclists had been killed, so the 2019 death toll represents a 112-percent increase.
Despite city streets awash in blood, a Queens community board member made headlines last week for saying at a community meeting that pedestrians "deserve to get run over” if they cross the street while on their phones and for calling Mayor de Blasio's Vision Zero initiative "a joke."
The comments by Kim Ohanian — who works for the city Department of Environmental Protection — has led to calls for her to be fired from her job as well as from the community board. Neither Ohanian nor her political patron, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, has returned calls.
The number of cyclist deaths will likely increase in the coming days. On Wednesday morning, an SUV driver critically wounded a 28-year-old cyclist in Queens. And a Citi Bike rider in Brooklyn was also badly injured earlier this month, and it is believed his wounds are life-threatening.
Crashes are not just an every-day event in New York City. There are roughly 630 crashes per day in New York City, with 124 crashes per day causing injuries to pedestrians, cyclists or motorists. The bloodshed has put pressure on Mayor de Blasio to do more to make the roads safe. Hizzoner will announce a new bicycle safety initiative on Thursday.
