Pedestrian Killed by Hit-and-Run Driver on Crowded Lower East Side Street

A hit-and-run driver in a massive SUV killed a pedestrian on a busy Lower East Side corner on Thursday night, police said.

According to the NYPD, the pedestrian, whose name and age was not released, was crossing Stanton Street in the crosswalk when the driver of the SUV turned right from Clinton Street directly into her.

The driver kept going. EMTs took the badly injured woman to Bellevue Hospital, where she died. [UPDATE: Cops said on Sunday that they had arrested Julio Cachago, 54 of Queens, and charged him with criminally negligent homicide, a rare charge even in a fatal crash.]

This year, in just the 30-square-block Lower East Side, there have been 478 reported crashes, injuring 235 people, including 60 cyclists and 46 pedestrians, according to city stats.

Overall in the city, between Jan. 1 and Dec. 15, there were more than 77,000 reported crashes, injuring 45,456 people, according to city stats. Doing the math, that means there are more than 223 reported crashes every day in this city, and 130 people are injured every single day.

Also on Thursday, the NYPD reported that an 88-year-old man who had been struck by a Lexus driver earlier in the month had died.

According to police, the driver had been moving eastbound on E. 80th Street at around 6 p.m. on Dec. 2 when he turned left onto First Avenue, striking Paul Rozenfeld, causing a head wound. Rozenfeld was taken to New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center where he died on Dec. 16.

The driver, who remained on the scene, has since been charged, though an NYPD spokesperson declined to say what the charge was.

This is a breaking story. Please check back for updates.