A 6-Year-Old Girl Was Run Down and Killed Last Night in Dyker Heights as Bloodiest Year Continues

A 6-year-old girl was killed by a reckless, wrong-way driver in Dyker Heights on Tuesday night, and the driver was held accountable with multiple charges, as Mayor de Blasio vowed to do more to prevent such crashes amid the bloodiest year of his tenure.

Some initial media coverage, unattributed, suggested that the girl, Hiromi Tamy had "darted out" into traffic, but the NYPD narrative makes it clear that she was just the latest victim of a reckless driver on a dangerous road.

According to police, Qiuhua Zhu, 30, was driving his Lexus GX460 SUV southbound on 12th Avenue at around 10 p.m. when he "crossed over the solid double yellow" line, "traveling into oncoming traffic."

"As the vehicle traveled southbound in the northbound lane, it made a left turn at the intersection of 67th Street, striking the 6-year-old pedestrian, who was crossing 67th Street in the east crosswalk southbound with the pedestrian signal in her favor," the NYPD added.

Zhu initially fled, but later circled back to the crash scene. Meanwhile, little Hiromi was taken to Maimonides Medical Center, where she died. Zhu was quickly arrested and charged with multiple counts, including manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, vehicular assault, reckless endangerment, failure to yield to a pedestrian, driving the wrong way down a street and making an improper turn.

"Crossing the street should not be a death sentence, but it too often is because of the inaction of our elected leaders," said Families for Safe Streets member Dana Lerner, whose 9-year-old son Cooper Stock was killed in the crosswalk by a taxi driver who failed to yield in 2014. "My son was killed holding his father’s hand in the crosswalk. Since then, traffic violence has taken 87 more children — including [Hiromi]. These aren’t statistics.These are 87 futures stolen and communities destroyed."

Later, Streetsblog asked the mayor to react to the death. Here was the exchange from Hizzoner's morning press conference:

McGuinness Boulevard is indeed in the midst of the city's lengthy redesign process from a deadly speedway into something more safe. That process, which dates back more than a decade, began in earnest after beloved teacher Matthew Jensen was killed by a hit-and-run Rolls Royce driver on May 18. The city intends to spend $39 million on a redesign, and many members of the Williamsburg community have participated in design workshops to perhaps remove a lane of traffic to add a protected bike lane and pedestrian safety features. The Rolls Royce driver has not been identified, an NYPD spokeswoman told Streetsblog.

Meanwhile, there are currently no plans in the works to improve safety on the one mile of 12th Avenue in Dyker Heights, where there were 30 crashes in 2020, injuring nine people.

This year has proven to be the deadliest  year on the roadways since Mayor de Blasio took over and initiated his effort to reduce road fatalities. Numbers of fatalities was declining under the Vision Zero initiative, but have risen again as more people are driving after the pandemic, and many people feel unsafe on transit, even though studies show that subways and buses are not a vector for the virus.

But basic science is often ignored by members of the public, including the 53 percent of the NYPD workforce that has not been vaccinated yet.

The mayor's comments also did not reference the massive increase in sales of sport utility vehicles in the city, which his own DOT has noted are a leading cause of death.

In a statement referring back to a seminal report in May, Transportation Alternatives singled out the SUV as an assault weapon on New York City roadways.

"Between 2016 and 2020, there was a 21-percent increase in the number of SUVs registered in New York City, while the number of registered sedans dropped 17 percent," the group said in a statement. "The share of fatalities involving SUVs in New York City has increased 55 percent for cyclists and 47 percent for pedestrians compared to Mayor de Blasio’s first term. The share of cycling and pedestrian deaths involving sedans declined 57 and 33 percent over the same period."