Drivers Kill Four Pedestrians in Six Days, Two Flee Scene

Four pedestrians have lost their lives on New York City streets since Thursday. Two of the crashes were hit-and-runs and a third killed a four-year-old child. A cyclist is also in critical condition after a man who wasn’t licensed to operate the tractor trailer he was driving struck her on a Bushwick street Friday morning.

At 12:30 a.m. Sunday, Manuel Tzajguachiac was crossing 65th Street at 20th Avenue in Bensonhurst, according to the Post. As he crossed the street, the driver of a BMW SUV struck and killed him. The impact sent the victim flying through the air but the driver never even stopped, the Post reported. Tzajguachiac moved to the United States six months ago from Guatemala, where his wife and son still live.

The SUV is known to belong to firefighter Pat Quagliariello, whose brother is an NYPD detective. Though Quagliariello told the police that the car was his a few hours after the crash, he isn’t saying whether he was driving the vehicle. Police released Quagliariello because they couldn’t prove he was the driver, according to the Daily News. He has been suspended pending the results of the investigation.

Later that morning, a delivery truck driver hit and killed a pedestrian on Morton Street near West Street, in the West Village. The police said that they have not identified the victim, though the Wall Street Journal reports that he was Dario Digiano, a 21-year-old from Belleville, New Jersey. The driver fled the scene and police are still trying to find him.

At around 2:00 a.m. this morning, a Duane Reade truck driver hit and and killed a pedestrian as he crossed Eighth Avenue at 56th Street.

The man, whose name is being withheld by police pending notification of his relatives, was a taxi driver going for a cup of coffee during his break, according to DNAinfo. Police say they “suspect no criminality” in the deadly crash.

On Thursday, four-year-old Evan Svirsky was hit and killed by a B49 bus driver. According to a report in the Post, Evan ran into the intersection of Oriental Boulevard and Falmouth Street. His mother tried to run after him and was also hit, suffering head trauma from the bus’s sideview mirror. She is in the hospital, in stable condition.

The Post quotes a local resident tying the crash to rampant speeding in the neighborhood: “It’s a 30mph zone but nobody does 30, it’s so scary.”

And on Friday, a 21-year-old woman was hospitalized in critical condition after the driver of a tractor trailer turned across her path on Johnson Street in Bushwick at around 9:30 a.m. Gothamist reports that the driver was charged for driving the truck without the proper license.