Police say they have arrested and
charged the driver involved in a crash that killed a 6-year-old girl in Dyker
Heights just steps away from her home.
The accident happened around 8 p.m.
Tuesday when police say the driver of a Lexus SUV on 12th Avenue crossed
over the double yellow lines, driving on the wrong side of the road against
oncoming traffic.
He continued to drive in the wrong
direction before turning left at 67th Street, where he struck Hiromi Tamy as
she crossing the street with the pedestrian signal in her favor, according
to police.
The driver, 30-year-old Giuhua Zhu,
of Brooklyn, originally drove off before traveling around the block and
returning to the scene.
Zhu is facing multiple charges,
including manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, driving in the wrong
direction on a one way street, and making an improper left turn on a one-way
road, among other charges.
Police say Zhu has no prior
criminal record.
Families for Safe Streets member
Dana Lerner, whose 9-year-old son Cooper Stock was killed in a crosswalk by a
taxi driver who failed to yield in 2014, spoke out against yet another
pedestrian fatality this year.
According to the organization, 2021
is on track to have the most fatalities of any year under Mayor Bill de
Blasio’s tenure as mayor, with 1,782 people killed by drivers.
"We need Mayor de Blasio and
our future mayor to fulfill the promises of Vision Zero. Police enforcement
will not get New York City to Vision Zero,” Lerner says. “Victim blaming by the
police, as the NYPD did in response to the death of this 6-year-old child, will
not get us to Vision Zero. We already know what will get us there — opening
streets to people, scaling proven safety measures across every corner of our
city, and prioritizing human life over driver’s convenience."
The mayor, when asked about
Tamy’s death during his daily press conference, says he “feels horrible that
another family is suffering, and so much of this comes down to changing the
whole mindset around cars.”
“This is what we’ve been doing for eight years with
Vision Zero, we all have to do a lot more,” he says. “People need to use cars
less, people need to drive more carefully … Vision Zero is the strategy, and
it’s the strategy that we have proven can make a difference, but it’s also been
a challenge by COVID and so many people getting back in cars.”
He says we need more mass transit
investment and recovery to make people more comfortable ditching their cars.