De Blasio’s Deadliest Year: A Senior is Killed By Driver in Bensonhurst

A Bensonhurst woman is dead after she was run over by the driver of a pickup truck on Friday morning — just days after, and a few blocks from where, a 6-year-old girl was killed while crossing the street with her mom.

Police had only limited information of the latest bloodshed but said that 69-year-old Chumei Pan was crossing 16th Avenue near 85th Street — just blocks from her home — when the 36-year-old behind the wheel of a 2021 Dodge Ram struck her at about 10 a.m.

Cops said the driver was heading east on 85th Street when he turned left, with a green light, onto 16th Avenue, striking Pan in the crosswalk. Police could not say whether the driver, who remained on the scene, was speeding or distracted at the time of the fatal crash. A spokesperson for the NYPD said the investigation is ongoing, but confirmed that the driver was not initially charged.

Days earlier, initial media coverage victim-blamed the little girl, Hiromi Tamy, suggesting that she had “darted out” into traffic. But the NYPD’s narrative made it clear she was actually the latest victim of reckless driving — police said that 30-year-old Qiuhua Zhu “crossed over the solid double yellow” line, “traveling into oncoming traffic” on 12th Avenue near 67th Street on Aug. 24 at about 10 p.m.

Cops arrested Zhu, who had initially fled but later circled back to the crash scene, and charged with multiple counts, including manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, vehicular assault, reckless endangerment, failure to yield to a pedestrian, driving the wrong way down a street and making an improper turn.

A vigil for the little girl was held on Thursday night. 

Tamy was at least the 166th person killed in traffic violence so far this year — the highest death toll since Mayor de Blasio took office in 2014 — and Pan is now at least the 167th person killed on the streets of New York City so far this year, and the 79th pedestrian, according to DOT.

So far his year in the 62nd Precinct, where Pan was killed, there have been a combined 965 reported crashes, causing 357 injuries, including to 43 cyclists and 73 pedestrians, and three fatalities, according to Crash Mapper. That’s roughly seven crashes a day in a very small corner of one borough.