Update: Teen Killed By Truck Driver in East Village; Video Contradicts Cops

A teen passenger on an electric Citi Bike bike was killed, and the pedaler injured, by a truck driver making a right turn at a busy intersection in the East Village, cops said.

According to police, two teenagers, one 16 and one 15, were on a bicycle heading westbound on E. 14th Street at around 9 p.m. on Friday night and attempted to make a right turn onto northbound First Avenue.

At the same time, the 57-year-old driver of a hulking Peterbilt truck was also turning from westbound 14th Street onto First Avenue.

The preliminary report from NYPD said the teens “collided” with the truck, but a person on a bike would have the right-of-way in the situation described by cops. The protected bike lane on First Avenue is on the western side of the roadway, meaning that a cyclist would have to proceed fully across First before turning.

And a video obtained by Streetsblog appears to show the cyclist trying to continue across 14th Street and not, as the police said, turning onto First Avenue.

WNBC4 reported that the girls were on a single electric Citi Bike.

Both victims were taken to Bellevue Hospital where the 15-year-old died. (She was later identified by family as Daria Serkov). The 16-year-old remained in stable condition with leg injury police said.

The garbage truck driver remained on the scene, police said. The investigation is ongoing.

Transportation Alternatives pointed out that cyclists who are traveling on 14th Street have to cross many lanes of traffic if they are turning onto the north or south avenues, as happened in this case.

“There is no bike infrastructure on 14th Street,” the group said in a statement. “Bike riders wishing to turn right onto First Avenue from 14th Street must first cross four lanes of traffic — with the current street design, even if bike riders and drivers both wish to turn right, the driver is directed to turn right against potential bikes. Simple, but effective infrastructure solutions like turn calming, signal re-timing, and more bike infrastructure can transform a deadly intersection into a safe one, here and across the neighborhood.”

Ben Furnas, the group’s executive director, called such turns “every bike rider’s nightmare.”

“You’re traveling straight with the right of way, when suddenly, a car or truck turns right directly into you,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you have the right of way, or you’re wearing a helmet, or you’re doing everything right. When we design intersections that force bike riders to cross four lanes of traffic, all the while doing so little to slow down that same traffic or calm their turns, tragedies like this happen.”

Nonetheless, some commentators focused on the victims and their e-bike rather than the driver or the large truck.

And Bradley Tusk, a former Bloomberg administration official and longtime critic of Mayor Mamdani, ignoring the fact that the cyclist who was piloting the Citi Bike was 16, the minimum required aged for riding, reiterated his years-long call for age verification of Citi Bike users and attacked the mayor’s “unyielding devotion to a far left ideology,” without mentioning the truck driver’s possible culpability.