Hit-and-Run Driver Kills Man on Notorious Queens Speedway

A hit-and-run driver killed a homeless man in the furthest southeast corner of Queens, the latest victim of a rash of violent crimes during the bloodiest year of Mayor de Blasio’s two terms.

According to police, Dimitry Maneiro, 38 and a resident of a hotel near the intersection of Rockaway and Brookville boulevards in that tiny peninsula of eastern Queens near JFK Airport, was attempting to cross Rockaway Boulevard, mid-block, at around 1 a.m. on Monday when he was struck by the driver of a 2014 Infiniti, who just kept going.

Maneiro, meanwhile, breathed his last right there in the roadway.

There’s no crosswalk at the location, and it is likely that Maneiro was crossing Rockaway Boulevard to access the driveway of the hotel at which he was living. A pedestrian was killed by a hit-and-run driver in almost the exact spot, and under similar circumstances, in 2019, Streetsblog reported. That driver was later caught, though it is unlikely that the current suspect will ever be identified or arrested. In 2020, police said they only caught 0.8 percent of the perpetrators of the 39,299 hit-and-run crashes in the city that year.

That same year, there were 15 hit-and-run crashes at that intersection, according to the NYPD. None was solved. Eleven involved property damage. Four caused injuries.

In 2019, the last full year with statistics not affected by the pandemic, there were 58 crashes on just the two-block stretch of Rockaway Boulevard between Brookville Boulevard and the Nassau border, according to city stats. Three pedestrians were injured.