Pedestrian Killed by Teen Driver in Brooklyn, Cops Say

A Brooklyn pedestrian was fatally struck by a teenage driver on Saturday night at a notorious intersection, Department of Transportation officials said.

According to a preliminary report issued by DOT and additional information later provided by the NYPD, 17-year-old Terah Saucier was walking across Kings Highway from south to north near the dangerous free-for-all intersection of Avenue K at around 7 p.m. when the 19-year-old driver of a BMW sedan, traveling westbound, slammed into him.

Cops found Saucier in the roadway with severe body trauma. He was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he died. The driver, whose name was not released, remained at the scene, and was not charged, police said. Photos from the crash site show that the BMW had no front plate, which is typically an indication that the car is registered out of state.

The NYPD declined to answer questions about the ongoing investigation, namely whether the driver was speeding or whether he was distracted in the seconds before the crash. The NYPD did not say whether the driver had the light. Cops would not even say whether the driver was in the main roadway of Kings Highway or on the service road.

A series of questions to DOT was not initially answered on Sunday.

Partly because of its wide lanes and service road, Kings Highway is a notorious danger zone as it cuts a diagonal through central and eastern Brooklyn. Last year, there were 452 reported crashes, injuring 19 cyclists, 32 pedestrians and 256 motorists on just the five miles between McDonald Avenue and the Queens border. Things may have improved somewhat since 2019, when there were 770 reported crashes along the same stretch, injuring 17 cyclists, 36 pedestrians and 272 motorists (though it is unclear if the reduction in the number of reported crashes between 2019 and 2021 is simply due to the fact that the NYPD no longer responds to non-injury crashes, which may mask the true danger of New York’s roadways)

So far this year, road fatalities and pedestrian fatalities are up by double-digit percentages over last year, according to DOT statistics (see chart below). And the NYPD says that pedestrian injuries are up 33.5 percent in the period from Jan. 1 through Feb. 6, compared to the same period last year.

Hours after the Brooklyn death, another pedestrian, this time a 60-year-old man, was killed by 21-year-old BMW driver in the Bronx, the Daily News reported.