Slaughter of the Innocents: 9-Year-Old Mowed Down By Reckless Driver

A 9-year-old child was run down and killed on a Sheepshead Bay sidewalk by a driver turning into a driveway, police said on Saturday, adding that the driver was not charged.

According to police, the child, whose name and gender have been withheld, was on the eastern sidewalk of E. 12th Street near Sheepshead Bay Road at around 2:40 p.m. on Friday when the 35-year-old driver of a Nissan Murano struck the child as she turned into a driveway.

The child was taken to Maimonides Medical Center, where she died. The driver remained on the scene and was not charged, though police said the investigation remains ongoing.

The timing and day of the crash suggest that the child may have been returning home from school, when New York City’s streets become significantly more dangerous to children, as Streetsblog reported earlier this year. According to that investigation, on school days, streets near schools experience roughly 32 percent more crashes per mile between 2 and 4 p.m. than on the city’s other streets. This disparity largely disappears on days when schools are closed.

Streets are especially dangerous outside schools where most students are poor or children of color. In the 2019 school year, for example, the rate of people injured by drivers on school days was 43 percent higher outside school buildings where a majority of students were brown or Black than outside school buildings with majority-white students. Crashes are more common too. These disparities have existed for years.

Drivers crash nearly 50 times and injure a dozen people near city public schools during the average day when schools are open.

The crash came one hour after another reckless driver struck a pedestrian. According to police, a 32-year-old woman was driving a 2020 Honda Fit westbound on a notoriously double-parked stretched Myrtle Avenue in Glendale near 71st Place when she stopped behind a double-parked vehicle. When she attempted maneuver around the truck, she “lost control, mounted the curb and struck a 25-year-old pedestrian,” cops said.

EMS said the man suffered a severe leg injury, said cops, who added that they charged neither the driver nor the operator of the “uninvolved” (their word) truck.

The area around Myrtle and Cooper avenues is notoriously dangerous. Since January 2019, there have been 53 reported crashes, injuring seven cyclists, six pedestrians and 12 motorists, according to city stats.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.