A 20-year-old driver was killed and his two passengers were injured after his car slammed into a tree on Ocean Parkway early Sunday, authorities said.
Zahurul Alam was driving north on the thoroughfare near Avenue J in Midwood around 2:45 am when he lost control of his 2001 silver Lexus and crashed, police said.
Alam of Beverly Road died in the wreckage. It’s unclear if the young driver was speeding. Police are still investigating.
The two survivors are men aged 20 and 23. They were rushed to Lutheran Medical Center where they were listed in stable condition, cops said.
The fatal crash is the latest in a series of deadly incidents on the roadway between Kensington and Coney Island.
Last month, an elderly Kensington resident was struck and killed by a tractor trailer as she attempted to cross the nine-lane intersection at Ocean Parkway and Church Avenue.
Tri-State Transportation Campaign designated Ocean Parkway as the borough’s most dangerous roadway for pedestrians in a study last year, because motorists killed six people on the boulevard between 2009 and 2011.
The elderly woman’s death prompted neighbors and Councilman Brad Lander (D–Park Slope) to demand that the state Department of Transportation make long-overdue safety improvements to the intersection.
Last year Lander allocated $200,000 for safety measures to be implemented at the intersection where Ocean Parkway meets the Prospect Expressway. But the state agency rejected the plan, saying that it would not make the intersection safer. The transportation agency claimed that a new safety project for the treacherous intersection is in the works.
“While pedestrian and traffic fatalities are down in recent years, we have a long way to go, and every death is a wrenching loss,” said Lander in the wake of Alam’s death.
Reach reporter Natalie Musumeci at nmusumeci@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-4505. Follow her at twitter.com/souleddout.
