Another Staten Island Pedestrian Has Been Killed — And the Driver is Not Charged
Another Staten Island pedestrian has been killed by a driver in a crosswalk — and, once again, the driver was not charged.
According to the NYPD, 62-year-old Hongyou Huang was run down on Sunday at around 9:40 p.m. as she crossed Tysens Lane by the 19-year-old driver of a 2015 Jeep SUV who was turning left into the roadway from busy Hylan Boulevard. The pedestrian signal was not yet in the steady “Don’t walk” phase, though Huang may have been outside the marked crosswalk, a police source said.
Huang was taken to Staten Island University North Hospital, where she died. The driver, whose name was not provided, remained on the scene and was not charged. He passed a field sobriety test and the Collision Investigation Squad and the Staten Island District Attorney’s office quickly concluded that there was “no criminality,” the police source said.
The NYPD declined to provide additional information, such as if the driver was distracted by a phone or a passenger.
The crash comes just a few days after a new report labeled Staten Island as the most dangerous place in the nation for pedestrians, and reality on the ground keeps confirming the data.
From Jan. 1 through April 25 this year in the 122nd Precinct, which covers a portion of the South Shore, the NYPD says there were 427 total reported crashes — or roughly four per day (reminder: Staten Island cops no longer respond to car crashes without injuries, depressing the statistics).
In 2019 (the last full year for which good statistics exist), there were 41 reported crashes, injuring two cyclists, one pedestrian and 16 motorists along just the four blocks of Hylan Boulevard on either side of Tysens Lane.
Eleven pedestrians and two cyclists have been killed on the Rock since January, 2019, including a man killed on Hylan Boulevard in December, very close to Sunday’s crash. In that two-and-a-half-year period, 642 pedestrians and 166 cyclists have been injured, or roughly one injury per day every day.
Citywide, since January, 2019, more than 500 people have been killed by car drivers, but the injury numbers are truly staggering: In just those 28 months, 118,275 people have been injured in road crashes, or roughly 140 injured people per day in New York City.
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