A 91-year-old pedestrian was critically injured this morning at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 25th Street in Manhattan when he was run over by the driver of a pickup truck, cops said.
The pedestrian, whose name was unavailable, was near crossing 25th Street at around 8:30 a.m. when he was struck by the driver of a 2012 Toyota Tundra who was attempting to turn left onto the side street from northbound Eighth Avenue.
The pedestrian was taken to Bellevue Hospital in grave condition — unconscious and unresponsive with head trauma, cops said. The driver, a 60-year-old male, remained on the scene, police said. He was not immediately charged.
So far this year, 59 pedestrians have been killed on the streets of this city, the most through this point in a year since Mayor de Blasio's Vision Zero initiative began in 2014. The city is on pace for the bloodiest year of the de Blasio era, with 110 people dead in road crashes so far this year, the most through June 13 of any year since de Blasio took over.
The avenue intersections in Chelsea are increasingly dangerous, as cyclists and pedestrians are given only tiny areas of the road space, while drivers are given all but one lane for cyclists on Eighth Avenue.
Cyclist Robyn Hightman was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 2019 on Sixth Avenue, two blocks from Thursday's crash. That same year, pedestrian Michael Collopy was killed by a hit-and-run cyclist, cops said. That preventable death was directly linked to the misallocation of road space.
The investigation is ongoing and no further information was available, police said.