A van driver struck and killed a cyclist on Sunday morning in Williamsburg, said police, who later charged the driver for operating the vehicle while drunk.
According to the NYPD's initial report on Sunday, both the 40-year-old van driver and the 46-year-old cyclist were heading northbound on Union Avenue at around 11:30 a.m. when the van driver struck several parked cars, and then hit the cyclist just south of Lynch Street.
Video of the last part of the incident, obtained by Williamsburg News, show a black van traveling at exceptional speed after its driver struck the cyclist. The driver then slammed his vehicle into an unoccupied parked car just north of Lynch:
— WILLIAMSBURG NEWS (@WMSBG) September 1, 2024
Bicyclist Luis Mendez was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he died. The van driver was in stable condition. His name, Can Homer, 40, was not released until Monday, when police announced that the Bedford-Stuyvesant resident had been charged with multiple counts, including vehicular manslaughter, driving while intoxicated and driving without a license.
According to city data, Mendez would be the 17th cyclist killed so far this year, slightly above the average of the Vision Zero years. And total road fatalities between Jan. 1 and Aug. 25 are up nearly 2 percent, to 170, from last year, according to the NYPD.
Over the same period, 24,707 people have been injured in crashes, or roughly 105 per day.
Council Member Lincoln Restler posted about the latest death on Twitter, adding, "We’ll keep pushing for safer streets on every block. More cyclists died in NYC last year than 25 yrs. These deaths are preventable w/ network of protected lanes.”
