It was horrific, it was depraved, it was predictable. And it will happen again.
Today, in a Brooklyn courthouse, Miriam Yarimi, the wigmaker and internet influencer who killed a mother and two of her kids earlier this year on Ocean Parkway, will be sentenced to three-to-nine years after her guilty plea on three counts of manslaughter.
You can flip through the other news outlets if you want the tabloid treatment of how this unlicensed driver with (as Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez put it), "a desire for social media fame" used her "two-ton weapon" in an "impressively reckless and selfish manner" to kill Natasha Saada and her kids on March 29.
Or better yet, you can read Gonzalez's stirring letter:
The letter is eloquent, but ultimately clangs discordantly against the rim of true justice and delivers a glancing blow against society's willful inability to address depravity such as Yarimi's, no matter how blatantly it plays out in public (indeed, Yarimi was filming a reality TV show in the days before the crash, Streetsblog has learned, despite clear evidence of real estate and vehicular fraud).
Yes, Gonzalez sought a sentence of five-to-15 years, but he ultimately bowed as Judge Denny Chun revealed earlier this week that he'd be handing down three-to-nine today.
We hoped against hope that Gonzalez's letter (obtained for Streetsblog by reporter Nolan Hicks) would lace into the judge for reducing what is already too small a sentence, the better to deter anyone who could act as recklessly as Yarimi. We'd hoped that Gonzalez would remind his constituents that the very design of six-lane Ocean Parkway allows for depraved behavior like Yarimi's.
We'd hoped, also, that Gonzalez would hint at some policy change that he intends to champion to prevent such horrors, or publicize state Sen. Andrew Gounardes's bill to require the vehicles of such drivers to be equipped with speed-limiting devices, which is a fruit that is not merely hanging low to the ground, it has moldered to seed.
We'd hoped, in short, that this pillar of law enforcement would offer a barbaric yawp at society's failure to prevent the next Miriam Yarimi — unlicensed yet still driving, whose sports car had been caught with 20 speed-camera tickets and five red-light tickets between August 2023 and the March 2025 carnage yet never seized or disabled by the cops.
The victims, Gonzalez said, "did everything right that day except having the catastrophic misfortune of being in the way of Miriam Yarimi." It's time for us to do everything right, too, so that no one can ever be in the way of someone like Miriam Yarimi.
Let this sentencing letter at least be the first step.
In other news:
- The new scaffolding is here! (NY Times, NY Post, amNY)
- The bus industry is fighting back against city rules requiring them to stop polluting the air with chemicals. (Bus and Motorcoach News)
- Bronx residents again beg Gov. Hochul to cancel the wasteful Cross-Bronx Expressway widening. (PIX11)
- Boy, did amNY swallow the city's battery-charging "announcement" whole. Our own Sophia Lebowitz provided far more thoughtful coverage.
- Here's a Trump administration streetscape change that we predicted weeks ago (NY Post), but it's one that local electeds say they'll fight. (amNY)
- More intrigue about the mayor's whereabouts. (NY Post)
