Minor Parking Lot Hit-and-Run Escalates, Leads to Death
A minor fender-bender in a Brooklyn parking lot escalated recently, and before the incident was over, a man was dead—the victim of a reckless and inexcusable act of violence. The driver responsible for the death was held at the scene by witnesses and later charged with murder by the NYPD.
Callousness Quickly Turns to Violence
The trouble began around 9 p.m. on the night of November 9, when the driver of a service van struck another car in the parking lot of the Sunset Park Costco and drove off. The motorists in the struck car, a sixty-five-year-old Coney Island man and his wife, followed the van and caught up with it at a red light on Third Avenue near 65th Street in Bay Ridge.
At that time the victim (a passenger) got out of the car and stepped in front of the van to confront the van driver about leaving the scene of the previous crash. The van driver reportedly briefly left the vehicle, but then got back in, and that’s where things took a tragic turn.
Witnesses say that the van driver deliberately accelerated into the victim and ran him down. He then dragged the man under the van for two blocks as passersby screamed at him to stop, before being cut off by a witness who blocked the van with his car and held it there until police arrived. The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital but did not survive.
An Almost Inevitable Tragedy
You might be tempted to shrug this sort of thing off as the kind of accident that almost never happens, but the truth is the spark behind this explosive incident happens constantly. An analysis by a fleet vehicle industry publication found that parking lot accidents make up about one of every five crashes—the largest single cause of vehicle damage.
There’s no reason to believe that individual drivers face better odds: Parking lot collisions are believed to account for about one of every seven auto insurance damage claims.
These aren’t all minor dings and scratches, either. The National Safety Council estimates that crashes in parking areas cause about 60,000 serious injuries and 500 or more deaths every year. That number might be even higher, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has estimated that nearly 2,000 people die each year in “non-traffic crashes,” which includes parking incidents.
New York Car Accident Lawyer
What happened in Brooklyn was extreme, and the state will hold the van driver criminally accountable for killing another man. But that might prove to be a small consolation to the victim’s family, which may now find itself without a critical source of financial support. That’s why, in cases like this, it’s vitally important that victims and their families seek restitution in civil court.
Greenstein & Milbauer, LLP have helped countless victims and their families recover compensation in their car accident cases. Our attorneys understand what’s involved in pursuing every kind of motor vehicle accident claim—even crashes that take place in parking lots and even those that might call for a wrongful death suit.
We offer every client a free consultation, so you have nothing to lose. Call us today at 1-800-VICTIM2 (842-8462) or fill out our online contact form at the bottom of this page.
