Upper West Side Pedestrian Dies from Injuries Caused by Reckless Van Driver

The Upper West Side pedestrian struck by a van driver last week in what one cop called “an accident” has died from his wounds, police said on Thursday.

As reported by Streetsblog last week, Angel Rodriguez-Albuquerque, 74, had been crossing Amsterdam Avenue at W. 106th St. on May 10 at around 3:45 p.m. when the driver of a turning RAM van struck him, causing what cops described at the time as “lacerations to his arms and head trauma.”

He was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital in stable condition but died two days later, police said.

The van operator — whose name was not released — remained at the scene and has not been charged, police said.

The incident is one of hundreds of injury-causing crashes that occur every day in New York City; according to the NYPD, there have been 12,876 crashes that have caused injury through May 14, or an average of 96 injury-causing crashes per day. So far, 3,062 pedestrians have been injured in those crashes, and 34 have been killed.

The difference in this case is that a witness told Streetsblog that a police officer on the scene said both the pedestrian and the driver “had the light,” and that the resulting crash was “an accident.”

“I was shocked, but unfortunately, not surprised when the cop said that,” said the witness, Ken Coughlin, a member of the neighborhood’s community board. “Both the pedestrian and the left-turning driver had the light, and the cop took that as just one of those things that happen. Meanwhile, the driver was free to go on his way and continue failing to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks.”

The NYPD declined to comment on the officer’s declaration of the incident as an “accident.” The agency said the driver had been issued a traffic ticket at the time of the crash, but no additional charges as of yet.