A 30-year-old driver has been charged after killing a 6-year-old girl on 12th Avenue in Dyker Heights on Aug. 24, police say.
Qiuhua Zhu was arrested and charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, vehicular assault, reckless endangerment, and a slew of other charges for the crash near 67th Street that killed 6-year-old Hiromi Tami, according to the NYPD.
Police say Zhu was travelling southbound on 12th Avenue at around 8:00 pm in a Lexus when he crossed over the solid double yellow line into oncoming traffic in the northbound lane, where he continued travelling before attempting a left turn at the intersection with 67th street, where he struck Tami as she was crossing the street.
Police and EMS responded to the scene and found Tami with severe wounds to her head and body, before transporting her to Maimonides Medical Center where she was pronounced dead.
“This is heartbreaking. Another life lost to vehicular violence.” Andrew Gounardes, the area’s state senator wrote on Twitter following the crash. “Please pray for this girl and her family.”
2021 is on track to have the most traffic fatalities of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tenure, despite the mayor’s signature vision zero street safety initiative. Street safety advocates called on City Hall to take more drastic steps to cut down on road fatalities, as the number of motorists on New York City increases during the pandemic.
“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,” said Dana Lerner, a member of the group Families for Safe Streets whose son Cooper Stock was killed in a crosswalk by a taxi driver in 2014. “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.”
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