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By Dec. 31, New York City will have recorded more than 80,000 reported car crashes in 2025. Every one of them is life-changing, but in the course of our coverage this year, we observed varying levels of psychopathic indifference by car drivers in the five boroughs. Here is a look back:
March 29 — Midwood, Brooklyn
No crash was more horrific, yet led to so little actual change, as when wig influencer Miriam Yarimi plowed her Audi A3 sedan through a busy intersection, killing 34-year-old Natasha Saada and two of her children. Yarimi was driving so fast that her own car flipped over.
Minutes before the collision, Yarimi drove erratically and blew through several red lights while playing with her phone. She had accumulated more than $12,000 in traffic fines. She bragged about speeding and driving recklessly on TikTok. Her license had been suspended — yet on she drove.
At the Saadas' funeral, the neighborhood's Republican Assembly Member Michael Novakhov told Streetsblog that he still opposed a bill that would require the installation of a speed-limiting device in the cars of repeat speeders like Yarimi — and the existence of speed cameras at all. "I'm against the cameras because we have too many," he said. The neighborhood's Council member, Simcha Felder, said nothing about the death of his constituents.
Yarimi received an unusually light punishment — three to nine years in prison — for killing the mother and two of her children. The collision did not lead to the passage of the aforementioned speed-governor bill, but Novakhov confessed that he was so shocked by the length of her sentence that he would now support it.
May 10 — Morrisania, The Bronx
The driver of a Mercedes sedan being chased by the NYPD struck and killed Kelvin Mitchell. The impact threw the father of three into the air before the driver dragged him for 100 feet along the ground. The driver fled.
Conflicting explanations from the NYPD only worsened the pain of the victim's family. "One was that the Mercedes was being chased for a good bit of time by the police," said one family member. "The second was that the officers inside the van were on patrol and only pursued the Mercedes after seeing it speed down the bus lane."
Both explanations fell afoul of new regulations around vehicular pursuits that Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch imposed just four months prior.
This collision stood out because DOT had planned to redesign McGuinness with protected bike lanes until Adams intervened at the behest of two influential donors in Greenpoint. The mayor later agreed to a diluted road diet that left some of the boulevard unsafe, including the segment where the Acura driver injured the cyclist.
A month after the crash, Manhattan’s district attorney indicted an Adams official and the two donors, for allegedly bribing the official to block the original McGuinness redesign.
July 19 — Chinatown, Manhattan
In one of the most shocking crimes of the year, a drunk driver of a speeding Chevrolet Malibu killed cyclist Kevin Cruickshank and pedestrian May Kwok at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge.
Yes, the district attorney charged the driver with murder, vehicular homicide, and vehicular manslaughter, but the crash also drew renewed attention to the seemingly endless effort to calm traffic on Canal Street.
Cruickshank's sister wrote a remembrance of her brother for Streetsblog last month.
August 13 — Astoria, Queens
An 84-year-old Toyota driver killed himself and two bystanders, Joaquin Venancio and Santiago Baires, who were waiting in line at a coffee cart near an automobile repair shop in Astoria where both men worked.
The driver was going at least 60 mph — more than twice the city-wide speed limit of 25 mph — and had blasted through a stop sign just before the collision.
Aug. 23 — Flushing Meadows, Queens
File this under "W" for "What the fuck?!": An inattentive NYPD officer driving a squad car ran over and killed Erasmo Huerta Gonzalez, who was laying down in a car-free path within Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
"Both the driver and passenger [in the squad car] ... were looking at each other instead [of the road]," one eyewitness said. Another said, "We had to yell and wave at the cops to stop the car. You could hear the crunch of what we assumed to be bones."
Sept. 24 — Midtown, Manhattan
The driver of Toyota Sienna minivan was blocking a crosswalk near Bryant Park when he abruptly reversed into a married couple from Germany. The collision killed Alexandra Sabine Lewalter Maric and severely injured Udo Lewalter. The driver lacked a valid drivers license and the Sienna had a fake license plate. Prosecutors charged him with leaving the scene of a crash and failing to yield to pedestrians — charges that will earn him, at most, a $250 fine.
Nov. 25 — Williamsburg, Brooklyn
The 76-year-old driver of a Hyundai Sonata mounted a sidewalk and crashed into a 33-year-old pedestrian, Margaret Duffy, who lost her leg below the knee. Surveillance video showed Duffy — who, again, was on the sidewalk, where cars are not supposed to drive — desperately trying to avoid the Sonata only to be hit and dragged to the ground.
It's the kind of grievous, life-changing wounds that can only be caused by a reckless driver operating a 2,000-plus-pound machine.
Dishonorable Mentions
On Feb. 4, a driver rear-ended an unnamed cyclist in Longwood. The impact threw the cyclist off his bike and caused severe head trauma. The driver fled and was never identified.
On Feb. 5, two drivers struck the same 90-year-old pedestrian, Frances Rickard, on the Upper East Side. Rickard died from her injuries.
On July 29, an unlicensed driver in a Nissan Rouge SUV rear-ended and severely injured an unnamed cyclist in Gramercy. The driver fled the scene and drove on a sidewalk before surrendering to police in Brooklyn.
On Oct. 20, the driver of a Ryder box truck crashed into a parked van in Chelsea and harmed eight pedestrians, one of whom received critical injuries. ABC7 published surveillance footage of the crash.
On Dec. 6, a speeding BMW driver struck and killed a pedestrian named Shariq Bryant in Williamsbridge. The driver hit a telephone pole and fled the scene on foot. They have not yet been identified.
Before joining Streetsblog in late 2025, J.K. Trotter covered media and politics at Gawker and edited investigations at Business Insider. He studied philosophy at St. John’s College and lives in Queens.
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