Drunk Driver Arrested In High-Speed Harlem Crash That Killed Cyclist, Injured Four Others

The reckless speeding driver who killed one cyclist and injured four more people on Thursday night on the busy main street of Harlem has been arrested and charged with drunk driving and manslaughter, cops said on Saturday.

And he lived just two miles away from his victim in the Bronx, the latest example of lives and neighborhoods severed in an instant by reckless driving.

Kevin Crosby, 49, who lives in University Heights, was arrested late on Friday and charged with manslaughter in the killing of 28-year-old bike delivery worker Darly Zacarias, of Highbridge. Cops also charged Crosby with drunk driving.

According to police, witnesses and video obtained by Streetsblog, Crosby was driving a red Hyundai eastbound in the bus lane on W. 125th Street. Just east of Frederick Douglass Boulevard, he struck Zacarias as well as another bicyclist, 33. One of the men’s bikes was under Crosby’s car, sending sparks in all directions; the other victim was thrown over the car:

(Warning: Graphic content.)

Crosby continued east and struck a Toyota Rav 4, injuring its 40-year-old occupant, and a parked Lexus that was occupied by two men, 28 and 23. Both of those men were injured, too.

“We heard the banging noise like that car crashing like maybe two or three times, it was very fast,” said witness, Sunny Singh, who works at a jewelry store on the block. “It was scary. I never saw one car going as fast as that. He was driving faster than on a highway! He was going like a bullet.”

Of the cyclist, Singh said, “He got killed for nothing. He was doing nothing wrong.”

The carnage ended when the Hyundai driver crashed into an unoccupied and parked NYPD vehicle and an unoccupied tractor trailer, cops said. The 33-year-old cyclist remains in critical condition at Harlem Hospital. Other victims had been taken there in stable condition.

Crosby’s car had a South Carolina plate with three local speed-camera violations on it since late November, according to city records. One ticket remains unpaid, not meeting the threshold of allowing authorities to seize it.

The advocacy group that fights for safe streets and working conditions for the city’s tens of thousands of delivery workers issued a statement that called the crash “a devastating reminder of the dangers deliveristas face every day.”

“Delivery work is among the most hazardous jobs in New York City. One in five workers has been injured on the job, and the occupation has a fatality rate five times higher than construction,” read the statement from Los Deliveristas Unidos. “Behind these numbers are workers navigating congested streets, unsafe road conditions, and dangerous driving behavior while under constant pressure to move faster themselves.”

People who are struck by drivers at 20 miles per hour — a standard speed limit that advocates want Mayor Mamdani to implement — have a 90-percent chance of surviving. But those odds decrease dramatically as drivers hit higher speeds. At 30 miles per hour, a pedestrian has a 60-percent chance of surviving.

At 40 miles per hour, the pedestrian has only a 20-percent chance of surviving.

Such statistics reveal the frustration many street safety advocates feel when drivers and their political enablers argue against speed-limit reductions.

The hour of the crash — 8:05 p.m. on a Thursday — also bolsters Mayor Mamdani’s argument that school zone speed limits should remain in effect not only in the hours that children are in classes, but at all times because schools are typically at the center of communities.

P.S. 154, for example, is one block from the crash site. The school is named after Harriet Tubman and has 140 students, all below the age of 11.

City Council Transportation Committee Shaun Abreu, who represents 125th Street just east of the site of the crash, called on the city to “do everything we can to improve safety for all road users” on the strip. Advocates from Transportation Alternatives took the call to action a step further — urging the Mamdani administration to build the long-sought “Central Harlem Bikeway” on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.

“We’re horrified to learn that a single driver was able to speed through one of the busiest corridors in Harlem,” the group said in a statement. “The City of New York must use Sammy’s Law aggressively and expansively to reduce speed limits to 20 mph, and install a network of protected bike lanes to connect every New York City neighborhood, starting with Adam Clayton Powell [Boulevard].”