Brooklyn Crash Victim's EMT Twin Sister Calls Out City, DSNY for Reckless Driving

A woman whose sister was killed earlier this week by a Department of Sanitation truck driver holds the driver and city responsible for the fatal crash — and plans to sue them over the tragedy, which she called “not an accident.”

“As someone who responds to emergencies on the daily, it was not an accident. The autopsy report says it was from blunt force trauma. Clearly, that’s 1,000s of pounds of pressure that hit her. So how fast were you turning?” Shannon Lynch said in an interview on Thursday, the day after the driver of a DSNY dump truck struck and killed her 30-year-old twin sister Siobhan at the corner of Cropsey Avenue and Bay Parkway in Brooklyn.

“These sanitation workers are getting away with too much. I want this man in jail. I want him arrested,” she said. “You killed my sister. You took the only person that I have away from me.”

Siobhan, left, with her twin sister, Shannon.

Shannon, who works as an emergency medical technician, said Siobhan was hyper-vigilant about crossing the street because of her sister’s line of work. She told Streetsblog she sees Sanitation Department drivers speed and run red lights “all the time.”

“They do run a lot of red lights. I see it all the time. I don’t know why they do that. They are not an emergency vehicle. You are picking up trash,” Lynch said.

Siobhan was crossing Bay Parkway from Bensonhurst Park to the southeast corner of Bay Parkway and Cropsey Avenue when the DSNY driver turned right from Cropsey Avenue onto Bay Parkway and crushed her, causing severe body trauma.

Lynch described Siobhan as a beloved aunt who helped care for her sister’s kids, often accompanying them at the very intersection where she was killed.

“My sister always went over there because her boyfriend lived there, and she would take my kids to the park across the street there all the time,” the grieving sibling said.

“She was always careful crossing the street, like she — I made sure she was careful crossing the street because she was with my children, you know. And even on her own, you know, she would cross. She would make sure. She would wait. She wouldn’t jaywalk. She wouldn’t. She was like, ‘No, no, no,’ you know. So I, I don’t, I don’t know how this could happen,” Lynch said.

A source who reviewed the video said both the driver and pedestrian had the light. DSNY declined to comment on the details of the incident.

“This is a terrible tragedy, and our thoughts are with the family of the victim. DSNY is assisting NYPD with their ongoing investigation,” Deputy Commissioner Joshua Goodman said in a statement.

A mourner named Dennis, who knew the victim, Siobhan Lynch, left flowers at the crash site at the corner of Cropsey Avenue and Bay Parkway. Photo: Sam Brule

The intersection of Cropsey Avenue and Bay Parkway is one of the worst in the city, sluicing impatient drivers on both of the wide, two-way roadways onto or from the Belt Parkway, itself one of the most dangerous highways in the city.

In 2025, there were 30 reported crashes at just that intersection, injuring 21 people, including five pedestrians. Since 2021, there have been at least 106 reported crashes, injuring 77 people, including three cyclists and 18 pedestrians, according to city stats. (There are likely many more victims, but city crash data has not been updated since early June, for reasons that have never been explained by the Mamdani administration.)

In a 2025 presentation in support of a recently installed bus lane on Cropsey, the city Department of Transportation pointed out that the entire stretch of Bay Parkway, including Cropsey Avenue, is a “Vision Zero Priority Corridor” because 25 people were killed or seriously injured between 2019 and 2023.