Two Drivers Kill Pedestrians in Separate Incidents — One Flees

Two people walking outside of cars were killed by drivers on Friday in separate incidents in Staten Island and Queens, police said, with one of the drivers fleeing his or her actions late at night.

In the first crash, police say Miao Ling Kuan, 53, was crossing Narrows Road South (otherwise known as the car service  road alongside the Staten Island Expressway) at around 7:45 a.m. when an unidentified 46-year-old driver, moving south on Fingerboard Road, turned left onto the service road and fatally struck her with his 2018 Ford truck. A police source said it was a vehicle used by a utility company to make repairs.

Fingerboard Road is a popular — and dangerous — shortcut to the entrance to the Brooklyn-bound Verrazzano Bridge. Kuan lived just two blocks away.

The driver remained on the scene as Kuan died in the street. Cops say the “investigation” is ongoing, but the driver was not charged as of Saturday morning.

Here’s what that crash site looks like:

The intersection of Fingerboard Road and the Staten Island Expressway (and its tangle of ramps) is a well-known danger zone. At that one intersection alone, there were 20 crashes in 2019*, injuring three pedestrians and nine motorists.

Hours later, a man who was trying to help the driver of a disabled car near JFK Airport was struck and killed by a hit-and-run (more accurately, a hit-and-run-away) driver, police said.

According to the preliminary report, the unidentified 51-year-old victim was standing outside of his 2005 Audi sedan and attempting “to help a stranded motorist” whose 20-year-old Dodge Caravan had “become disabled” in the left lane of the inaptly named Nassau Expressway near North Hanger Road at around 10:20 p.m.

At that point, the driver of a blue 2012 Ford E350 van, traveling eastbound on the highway, hit the victim, abandoned his van, and fled on foot. The victim was taken to Jamaica Hospital, where he died. The investigation is ongoing, police said on Saturday.

Here’s what that crash site looks like:

That stretch of Nassau Expressway is notorious for speeding. In 2019*, there were 193 crashes, injuring one pedestrian and 92 drivers — and killing one cyclist — between North Boundary Road and North Hanger Road, two airport service roads.

* Streetsblog is using 2019 crash data as a benchmark because 2020 statistics are unreliable given the markedly different traffic patterns of the pandemic months.