Cycle of Rage: Cops Shrug Off Glendale Speeder Who Seriously Injured A Kid — Then Blame The Kid!
Pedestrian error.
That’s how rookie cop Makai Foye described the crash you’ll see below (if you have the stomach for it):
This is no “pedestrian error.” This is a pedestrian wipeout.
The crash occurred at around 5 p.m. on Oct. 14 on 75th Avenue in Glendale. Leading up to it, three boys were waiting at the southeast corner of 60th Lane to cross to the northeast as the driver of 2019 Jeep sped recklessly westbound on 75th Avenue (it’s the same intersection where a man was struck in March). You can see how fast this driver is going on the video. In my eight years at Streetsblog, I’ve seen lots of videos like this; the guy is speeding.
The light turns yellow and, yes, the kids start crossing. As they make it to the yellow line, they likely expect the driver to stop because, by this point, his light has turned red. But instead, the driver floored it, slamming into all three boys, one of whom, aged 12, is seen on the video flying 30 feet down the road, suffering multiple fractures to his pelvis and skull and a concussion. (The other boys did not suffer injuries that required any medical attention.)
The initial police report by Foye said the driver, Brailler Christoper, 37, lives in New Jersey and has a New Jersey driver’s license but has a car registered in New York, which should have alarmed the officer. And anyone looking in city records at the ticket history on this car (as Foye apparently failed to do) would clearly see that it belongs to a New Yorker: it’s been nabbed by city speed, red-light and bus-lane cameras 12 times since March alone, and has 125 violations, mostly for parking, since 2022. (An amended report by Foye eventually identified the owner of the car as a Queens man who was not driving it at the time of the crash.)
That sloppiness aside, both the initial report and the amended one have the same narrative: The boys committed an “error” and the driver didn’t do anything wrong. As far as the NYPD was concerned, case closed.
That didn’t sit right with Council Member Phil Wong (D-Middle Village). Wong doesn’t have a perfect record on livable streets issues, but he does know the danger of a speeding driver and a lack of accountability. After the March crash, he started sounding the alarm about the cut-through traffic on 75th Avenue.
As a first step after the latest crash, Wong got the NYPD to reassign the case from the 104th Precinct to the elite Collision Investigation Squad, which conducts fuller investigations, though is typically restrained to only fatal crashes or those that cause serious injuries.
Wong was pleased that the NYPD added resources and participated in a walk-through on Friday with him.
“When a pedestrian is struck by a vehicle, especially a child, I expect every available tool to be used to thoroughly investigate what happened, and while I’m grateful this 12-year-old boy is alive and recovering, his parents, including his mother who is a dedicated civic leader, are understandably devastated,” Wong told Streetsblog in a statement. “I am concerned about the preliminary information in the NYPD’s collision report indicating the driver had a green light, as surveillance footage obtained by my office raises questions about the vehicle’s speed and the traffic signal at the time of the collision, including whether the driver entered the intersection as the light was changing or after it had turned red.”
The bottom line, Wong added, is that “drivers need to slow down.”
I’d add another bottom line: Cops need to know the difference between a reckless driver gunning it to get through an intersection after the light has changed and three tweens and teens crossing a street.
There’s a GoFundMe page for the family of the victim in this case.
