Four dead in Queens crashes over the weekend, including 5-year-old boy
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Traffic violence killed four in Queens over the weeknd, including a 5-year-old in College Point. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
Four people, including a 5-year-old boy were killed in three unrelated incidents of traffic violence all within a day of each other in Queens over the weekend.
The three incidents, one in College Point, one in Elmhurst and another on the Van Wyck Expressway in South Queens, marked a bloody weekend for Queens as the borough deals with a historically grim situation on its streets.
The deaths come after Queens experienced its deadliest first quarter on the borough’s streets in the past decade earlier this year.
The first of the three incidents occurred on Saturday night in College Point around 6 p.m., as reported by the Daily News.
According to reports, a 5-year-old ran into the street on 124th Street, not far from Poppenhusen Playground when he was struck by a 25-year-old woman driving a Honda CR-V.
The child suffered head injuries and was rushed to NYC Health + Hospitals Jacobi where he was pronounced dead, cops said
“When this one car was coming, she was kind of coming slow and fast at the same time and this kid just crossed the street and we heard ‘pop’,” a witness told the Daily News . “We went to go check and then we saw a little kid under the car. We screamed out, ‘Whose kid is this?!'”
The driver stayed at the scene and was seen crying, and no arrests were immediately made.
The boy, whose identity is currently unknown, is the third child younger than 10 to be killed in traffic violence since November, following the death of 3-year-old Quintus Chen in November and the death of 8-year-old Bayron Palomino Arroyo in March.
The second crash over the weekend occurred the following morning, at around 4:30 a.m. on the busy Van Wyck Expressway when a man was struck by a police officer in an NYPD vehicle.
According to an NBC report, the highway officer driving a patrol vehicle stuck the 23-year-old man on the southbound side of the expressway around Liberty Avenue in South Richmond Hill.
The victim was rushed to Jamaica Hospital, but was pronounced dead.
The driver was on his way to another incident and tried to change lanes when he hit the man. It is unknown why the victim was walking on the highway.
The officer stayed at the scene.
The third incident occurred later on Sunday night, this time in Elmhurst, where two men on a moped were killed in a hit-and-run.
The crash happened in the Western Queens neighborhood around 8:20 p.m., Gothamist reported, when the driver of a Volkswagen hatchback was turning onto 57th Avenue near 82nd Street.
The driver reportedly crossed the center line and struck the bike and its two riders, who were headed in the opposite direction.
The two riders were pronounced dead, one at the scene and the other at Elmhurst Hospital.
The driver continued with the bike still attached to their front bumper, hitting two other parked cars before exploding into flames. The driver then fled the scene.
No arrests have been made.
The bloody Queens weekend continues a grim trend for the World’s Borough, where 22 people were killed in the first three months of 2024, accounting for 37 percent of the 60 deaths citywide, marking Queens’ deadliest first three months in the past decade.
