Driver Kills Maria Serrano, 50, as Victim Walked Her Dog in SI Crosswalk

A Staten Island motorist killed a woman who was out walking her dog Saturday. The victim was the sixth person killed by a driver while walking or biking in the 122nd Precinct in the last 13 months.

Maria Serrano, 50, was crossing Richmond Road at Amboy Road, in the crosswalk, at around 6:49 a.m. when Luigi Tucci hit her with a Toyota pickup truck while turning left on Richmond, according to reports from the Staten Island Advance and Gothamist.

A witness told the Advance the victim was “catapulted into the air” upon impact. A photo of the scene shows the pickup stopped in the crosswalk and a pool of blood on the street several yards in front of it.

Serrano sustained injuries to her head and body. She died Sunday morning at Staten Island University Hospital in Ocean Breeze, the Advance reported.

Elderly driver gravely injures pedestrian in Staten Island crash https://t.co/oSeILtSTmQ via @NYDailyNews pic.twitter.com/pUClgbfeSE

— Reach1SocialMedia™ (@Reach1SocMedia) May 29, 2016

“She was a really wonderful woman. It was just a very, very sad thing,” Serrano’s neighbor Robert Brady told the Daily News. “She was really into animals.” Relatives and friends are searching for Serrano’s dog, who went missing from the scene.

Police arrested Tucci, 71, and charged him with failure to yield and careless driving. As of this afternoon the case did not appear in an online database of court records.

This fatal crash occurred in the 122nd Precinct, where motorists have killed four pedestrians and two cyclists since April 2015, according to crash data compiled by Streetsblog. NYPD data show precinct officers issued 171 failure to yield citations and 499 speeding summonses this year as of April.

Maria Serrano was killed in the City Council district represented by safe streets critic Steven Matteo.