Cops are searching for hit-and-run drivers who ran down and killed a 92-year-old man on First Avenue and a 24-year-old Queens woman at around the same time last night.
In the Manhattan incident, police said that the senior was struck at the intersection of E. 40th Street at around 11:30 p.m. on Thursday night by the driver of a "dark-colored vehicle" that was heading northbound on First Avenue — and kept going.
The senior was found minutes later by EMTs with head and body trauma. He was taken to nearby Bellevue, where he died.
About an hour earlier, EMTs discovered a woman lying in the roadway of South Conduit Boulevard just west of Linden Boulevard in Queens with severe head trauma. She was taken to Brookdale Hospital, where she died.
Cops said she had been attempting to cross South Conduit when a driver, traveling eastbound on the highway-like road, struck her and fled.
The identities of both of the deceased people are pending proper family notification.
As of March 1, 14 pedestrians had been killed by drivers in the city, but there have been at least four more since.
First Avenue is a much safer roadway than other Manhattan avenues without protected bike lanes and other improvements that were made on the street a decade ago. For instance, between 34th and 42nd streets, there were 78 total reported crashes on First Avenue in 2019, injuring just six pedestrians and no cyclists. But the same stretch of Third Avenue, which does not have protected infrastructure, there were 180 reported crashes, injuring five cyclists and five pedestrians (and killing one pedestrian) in the same one-year-period.
The highway-like maze of Linden and South and North Conduit boulevards also had many crashes in 2019, according to Crashmapper: There were 58 crashes at that intersection alone, injuring one cyclist, one pedestrian and 25 motorists.
