In an interview with Christopher Robbins at The Village Voice yesterday, an NYPD detective provided some updates on Kelly Hurley,
the 31-year-old Lower East Side resident who died from her injuries following a collision with a box truck on First Avenue at Ninth Street on April 5.
Among the revelations:
• The NYPD to date has issued a single summons to the driver — for not having a crossover mirror.
• The spokesperson, Detective Ahmed Nasser, said that the truck "made a left turn from the rightmost lane" onto East Ninth Street.
• The detective said that Hurley "slipped off her bike" at the intersection and was struck by the truck.
Robbins asked Nasser if the truck driver, who remained at the scene of the collision, "should have been making sure that he wasn’t turning into a cyclist or a pedestrian in the intersection."
Nasser's response:
“Well, I suppose you can say one or the other, but it seems like he probably didn’t see her, and she was going up north, he was making a left, he’s actually already into the intersection, he was already making the turn. She probably didn’t stop in time, and she slipped and fell under. . . . He’s already in, she tried to stop, she came off the bike, she slipped under the truck."
Streetsblog yesterday said that this was another case of the NYPD blaming the victim.
Hurley is gone. She can’t recount her version of what happened on the morning of April 5, so we’re left with what the police tell us. And as is often the case when a motorist kills a pedestrian or cyclist, the NYPD account is a bizarre mess that exonerates the driver.
Detective Ahmed Nasser told the Voice that the motorist was turning left from the right-most lane, which, if true, is a moving violation. Turning motorists are also required to yield to cyclists at the intersection where Hurley was fatally injured, but Nasser offered up a series of conjectures to reach an exculpatory conclusion.
In an interview with DNAinfo, Nasser confirmed that the truck driver had come to a complete stop on First Avenue before making the abrupt left turn onto Ninth Street across four lanes of traffic.
He also said that the investigation is ongoing "and the truck driver may still be arrested."
Cycling and pedestrian advocates have spoken out against this intersection design. The crash happened in one of the so-called "mixing zones" where drivers are allowed to make careful left turns from First Avenue as cyclists are going straight through intersections with the green light.
[
Photo from last Thursday]
Updated 10 p.m.
Patch attended tonight's Community Council Meeting at the 9th Precinct, where Lt. Brian Reynolds, commanding officer of the NYPD's collision investigation squad, addressed the collision.
"My own opinion is, I'm going to be recommending the driver be held accountable. I can't explain to you exactly what it's going to be right now, but after what I've seen, he's going to be held accountable, at least on my end, from my office."
And...
Reynolds declined to specify what exact recommendations he would make to the Manhattan district attorney's office, and did not confirm that the driver would necessarily be charged. Any criminal charges filed will ultimately be determined by prosecutors.
