Another pedestrian is dead in the Bronx after the driver of a van struck and killed a 67-year-old man on Soundview Avenue on Monday morning — not far from where a woman was killed by a driver just days earlier.
Police have provided little information about the fatal crash, but say the 57-year-old man driving a 2019 Ram cargo van was heading north on Soundview Avenue when he struck the victim near Lafayette Avenue just before 5 a.m. Cops say the victim, Raul Irizarry, was crossing “mid-block” when he was hit, but could not say whether the driver was speeding or distracted when he struck the victim.
The driver remained on the scene, and was not issued any summonses or arrested, according to police, while paramedics rushed Irizarry to Jacobi Hospital, where he died. Police say the investigation is ongoing.
The fatality comes two days after Sonia Sotomayor, 58, was killed by a driver near the intersection of East 180th Street and Southern Boulevard in the West Farms section of the Bronx.
The two victims are among the more than 211 people killed on the streets of New York City so far this year — a number that puts the city on pace to have its deadliest year of Mayor de Blasio’s time in office, even worse than last year, when 29 were killed and 243 were killed in total.
Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Danny Harris called the deaths eminently “preventable.”
“With more than 210 people killed in traffic violence so far, 2020 is projected to have the most traffic deaths of any year during Mayor de Blasio’s time in office,” Harris said, adding that both crashes “occurred in parts of the city neglected during Mayor de Blasio’s tenure and Vision Zero program.”
So far this year, there have been 16,074 crashes in the Bronx alone, causing 6,841 injuries, including to 1,010 pedestrians and 685 cyclists, plus 36 fatalities, including six cyclists and 10 pedestrians, according to CrashMapper. That number of crashes works out to about 52 crashes every single day in The Bronx.
By comparison, in more populous Manhattan over the same period, there have been 13,287 crashes since the start of the year, causing 24 total fatalities. That's about 42 crashes every day in Manhattan.
This story has been updated to include the victim's name.
