The 91-year-old pedestrian who was critically injured last week at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 25th Street in Manhattan when he was run over by the driver of a pickup truck has died, cops said.
Jose Calo was near crossing 25th Street with the light at around 8:30 a.m. when he was struck by the 60-year-old driver of a 2012 Toyota Tundra, who was turning left from northbound Eighth Avenue. Police said the pedestrian was crossing with the light and in the crosswalk.
Calo was taken to Bellevue Hospital in grave condition — unconscious and unresponsive with head trauma, cops said at the time. He died on Sunday, three days after the crash.
The driver, a 60-year-old male, remained on the scene. The driver's name was not released, and he remains uncharged, even for failure to yield or failure to exercise due care, the lowest-level charges.
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.
This year is on pace for the most road violence victims in the entire seven-plus years of Mayor de Blasio's Vision Zero, as Streetsblog has reported. Through June 23, 121 people have been killed in road crashes, the most through June 23 of any year since de Blasio took over. Calo is one of 62 pedestrians who have been killed, all but two by cars. Sixty-two dead pedestrians is the highest at this point of the year since before Mayor de Blasio took over.
The mayor said he believed that the city would get on top of the violence once the NYPD got other problems — such as the uptick in shooting — under control, suggesting that the roadways will have to wait for the enforcement part of Vision Zero (the mayor was also let down by legislators in Albany, who failed pass bills, backed by the mayor, to allow the city to reduce the speed limit and to use speed enforcement cameras 24-7-365 without state approval).
