Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Tagged with Bronx wrongful death

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The building where a lady died in a fireAn electric scooter being charged is the cause of a fire that ravaged a residential building in New York City, killing one and injuring 11. The fire started in the middle of the night, around 4;40 am on Wednesday inside an apartment on the third floor of a building located in the Bronx, on Park Ave near E. 161st Street in Concorde Village. Residents heard a loud boom and then the fire spread very quickly to the upper floors of the six-story building. Residents were woken up by the smell of the smoke or by other residents screaming about the fire and asking everybody to get out.

3 unconscious people were removed from the flames by the firefighters

The tenants of the 20 apartments located in the buildings were all forced out extremely quickly and lost everything in the fire. 10 of them were injured as well as one firefighter. Some of the tenants were critically injured and a 91 year old lady died. She was among  the 3 residents that were unconscious when the firefighters pulled them out of the flames. The tow other unconscious residents were an 80 year old man and a 54 year old man. The elderly woman died from smoke inhalation and the two other men were in critical but stable condition.

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Ghost bike showing locations of previous NYC deadly bicycle accidentsA cruel and reckless driver  blows a stop sign, hits a cyclist critically injuring him, drives away, comes back, takes a look at the cyclist, gets back in his car and speeds away.

The accident occurred at night last week in the Bronx. A 46 year-old cyclist was riding his bike through the intersection of Dudley and Edison Avenues in Pelham Bay when a driver blew the stop sign and slammed into him.  A video surveillance first shows the driver taking off.  He then returned to the scene of the accident, took a look at the victim who was suffering critical injury and took off again. The victim was found by EMS and rushed to the hospital. (Read more in the Daily News)

Bicycle accidents injuries in the Bronx have been on the rise during this period of the year compared to the same period last year.  According to the most recent NYPD traffic statistics, 17 people were injured in bicycle accidents in the Bronx during the week of April 5 to April 11 compared to 2 during the same week a year earlier.  Last years numbers were much lower because the city was observing the Covid19 lock-down and the streets were mostly empty. The same can be said when looking at statistics on a 4 week basis. 54 people were injured in Bronx bicycle accidents between March 14 and April 11 2021 compared to 20 for the same period a year earlier.

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location of the elevator accidentA young mechanic was killed in an elevator accident in New York City last Thursday. 25 year old Joseph Rosa, a mechanic apprentice was helping repair an elevator in a building located at 133 E. Clark Place in the Bronx. The elevator cabin fell down the shaft and crushed the young man at the bottom. According to tenants in the building, the elevator was out for months. Jospeh Rosa was there with a team to perform modernization work when the dramatic accident occured. Another worker was also injured.

Joseph Rosa had just married his wife Karina Stepanova in a Russian Orthodox Church. A month before the wedding he converted to his wife’s religion and got baptized. “He was starting to get closer to religion, closer to God,” the bride-turned-widow said. “It’s like he knew this was coming.” (read more in the NY Daily News)

Installing and repairing elevators is a dangerous job and multiple fatalities and serious injuries are reported nationwide every year. In New York,  too many workers have died while repairing elevators because they were lacking the proper training or because the elevators were defective or unsafe.

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location of the fatal e-bike accidentTwo e-bike riders died in NYC accidents  during which they lost control of their bike while no other vehicles were involved since the beginning of this year. Another similar accident occurred around Christmas (see previous blog).

On Thursday January 6th around 2:45 pm, 26 year old Cheng Wang was riding a e-bike on Ralph Avenue. As he was near Avenue D in Flatbush, Wang lost control of his e-bike and fell to the ground. EMS found him unconscious in the street and rushed him to the hospital. While unconscious, Wang was still alive when he arrived at the hospital. He died less than 12 hours later from internal injuries. It is not clear what caused Wang to loose control of his e-bike. The segment of Ralph Avenue where he fell is in an industrial area and the pavement has a lot of cracks.  The weather was very cold as well and the road might have been icy. (read more in StreetBlog)

Less than 24 hours later, on Friday January 7, a man on a e-bike crashed into a parked car in the Bronx and died from his injuries, The accident occurred around 12:45 am. The victim was riding an e-bike on East 149th Street in the Bronx when he crashed into the back of a car parked next to the curb. A surveillance video shows the cyclist riding in the middle of the street, then veering to the right and hitting the car parked against the curb. It is not clear why the victim piloted his  e-bike that way. Maybe there was a pothole, debris on the ground or black ice? The victim who according to the NY Daily News was in his 30ies was not wearing a helmet. He suffered major head trauma. EMS found him unconscious in the street and transported him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. The man did not have any identification on him.

 

 

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location of the deadly tractor trailer accidentA 71 year old pedestrian was fatally struck by a tractor-trailer in the Bronx, NYC, just one one week after a cyclist was killed by a big rig in the same borough. The victim was crossing the dangerous intersection of East 38th Street and Exterior Street around 4:00 pm yesterday when a MAC tractor-trailer truck travelling South hit the pedestrian and fled the scene of the accident leaving behind him the victim dying on the ground.  The NYPD was alerted by a 911 call of  and when they arrived at the scene of the accident, they found the man lying on the street, unconscious and with severe head trauma. The senior pedestrian was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. The police are still looking for the truck which had a white rig and a red trailer and the truck driver.

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location of the fatal moped accidentA man riding a moped was fatally struck by a reckless driver in the Bronx, NYC.

Early Sunday, around 12:30 am, 57 year old Frank Davila was riding a moped South on Rosedale Avenue when he was struck by 33 year old Stephanie Mendez who was driving a 2005 Grey Volvo Sedan.  At the time of the accident Mendez was driving with a suspended license.  The police checked her blood alcohol which registered 0.074 which is below the legally drunk level. Despite a blood test below the legal level, the police charged her with driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and driving with a suspended license. The investigation is not over yet though but so far Mendez has not been charged with criminally negligent homicide or vehicular manslaughter.

Paramedics found Davila unresponsive and unconscious on the sidewalk. They rushed him to the hospital but it was too late and the 59 year old father was pronounced dead.

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One pedestrian died and two were seriously injured in New York City last week. In all cases, drivers were recklessly driving and in two cases drivers took off after the accident leaving their victims lying on the street.

The first accident occurred on Tuesday in the Bronx. 72 year old Sidney Sale was walking back home after stopping at his local Bodega. As he was crossing the intersection of East 211th  Street and Paulding Avenue in Williamsbridge in the Bronx he was struck by a car. The pedestrian who was in the crosswalk, fell on the ground. The reckless driver did not stop and fled on East 211th Street.  Immediately after, another driver making a left turn onto East 211th Street from Pauling hit the victim for the second time and dragged him along the street. The second driver stayed at the scene of the accident. Sydney Sale suffered trauma all over his body and was rushed to the hospital where he later died from his injuries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0azfwcrtk

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location of the deadly crash between a cyclist and a tractor trailer truckA 34 year old man died in a bicycle accident in the Bronx, NYC, yesterday. The cyclist collided with a tractor-trailer truck on Bruckner Boulevard around 1:45 pm.  It is still not clear how the accident occurred. An initial police report indicates that the cyclist was riding westbound on Bruckner Boulevard and that the Tractor Trailer Truck driver was heading South on Brown Place. No information was provided about who had the light. The report just concludes that the cyclist ran into the back of the truck. The area is often congested as road users use this part of the Bruckner Boulevard to access the Willis Avenue Bridge.

Why would a cyclist run into the back of a truck?

This seems  to be a very strange conclusion and hopefully further investigation will reveal what exactly led to the death of this cyclist. Unfortunately the NYPD has a long history of blaming cyclists for crashes and giving slack to faulty drivers. Last year, Mario Venezuela, a Queens teenager, was fatally hit by a negligent truck driver. The police blamed the teenager for his own death however surveillance footage of the crash shows that the truck driver was reckless and cause the death of the teenager. A video of the crash shows the truck driver veering to his left before cutting hard into a right turn without using his turn signal and crashing into Venezuela.

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protected bike lane saves livesWhile bicycle accidents injuries in New York City went down by 3.6% during the last 3 months compared to the same period last year, bicycle accident injuries in the Bronx increased by 35 %. Bicyclist activist organization, Transportation Alternatives has been asking the city to install more bike lanes in the Bronx but instead the DOT is planning to use more police enforcement.

At the beginning of the summer the NYPD organized a four-weeks enforcement blitz to tame down speeding and failure to yield at Bronx high crash corridors such as Bruckner Boulevard and is planning to organize another one soon.

However while the blitz was  effective in preventing pedestrian accidents, it didn’t curb the soaring number of bicycle accidents in the Bronx this summer. On June 11th, a 24 year old cyclist died from his injuries  after being hit by a car on on Willis Avenue and E. 138th Street. The same day, a 38 year old cyclist was fatally struck by a truck on Park Avenue near 138th Street. Then, on June 20, a 43 year old man riding a e-bike in Pelham Bay Park died after being struck by a vehicle. Last week a cyclist who was hit by a car near East 175th street on August 5th and fought for his life for almost a month, died from his injuries. As mentioned above the number of bicycle accidents injuries is also soaring in the Bronx and a police blitz will have little effect on changing this dangerous trend. In an article in StreetBlog, Edwin Figueroa, a senior organizer at Transportation Alternatives, is asking for permanent measures allowing cyclists to be safe when commuting in the Bronx. “What cyclists from all over the city, but especially in the Bronx, need from this administration is more protected bike-lane infrastructure. The Bronx needs redesigned streets that are self-enforcing, not streets that are reliant on NYPD enforcement to ensure safeness,” he said.

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the victim posted a picture of her car on IGA woman standing next to her car was fatally hit by a tractor trailer truck in NYC last week. 27 year old Keara Rosa had just purchased a used car two weeks before with some cash that she had been saving. She was very proud of her purchase and posted a picture of the new car on Instagram and commented “HARD WORK PAYS OFF , Thank you god”. Last Wednesday around 12:15 she was driving her car on the  Cross Bronx Expressway  near Southern Boulevard when something went wrong with it. She pulled over onto the shoulder and got out of her car. As she was standing next to her car, a massive truck crashed into it, pinning Keara between the car and the wall of the expressway and killing her.

The out of control truck hit several cars injuring two before fatally crashing into Keara’s car

According to the police, the 55 year-old truck driver was driving in the right lane of the 3-lane Bronx Expressway when he swerved to the left to avoid slow traffic ahead of him. As he was doing so, he  lost control of his truck and hit 3 cars: a Toyota Corolla driven by a 51 year-old man, a Toyota Camry driven by a 29 year-old woman and a Lexus driven by a 58 year old woman. After hitting the 3 cars, the truck swiped the concrete divider in the middle of the highway.  It then swerved back to the right side crashing into Keara’s car and killing her.