Two people died in fatal car crashes in central Brooklyn overnight, including one pedestrian and one dirt biker, cops said.
The first victim, a 54-year old man, died in a hit-and-run at around 11 pm on Wednesday while attempting to cross Rockaway Parkway at Lenox Road, when a driver in a white BMW traveling southbound on the thoroughfare hit him.
Cops found the man lying in the roadway with traumatic injuries, and paramedics rushed the victim to Brookdale Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.
The driver fled the scene, and police have not made any arrests as of yet.
Just over two hours later, at around 1:12 am on Thursday morning, cops responded to a report of a dirt biker injured in a collision on Linden Blvd at Schenck Ave in East New York. Officers arrived to find a man lying in the roadway, also with traumatic injuries. Paramedics took the victim to to Brookdale Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.
The dirt biker was traveling northbound on Schenck Ave when he entered the intersection with busy Linden Blvd, and was struck by a 27-year-old man driving an Infiniti sedan. The Infiniti driver remained on the scene, and cops haven’t made any arrests in the incident.
Neither of the deceased individuals have been identified by the NYPD.
Both Linden and Rockaway have been the site of multiple fatal car crashes in the past two years, according to NYC Crash Mapper. Three people have died in crashes on Rockaway between June 2019 and June of this year, including two motorcyclists in separate incidents, a year apart, at the intersection with Ave K in Canarsie.
Linden, one of the busiest roads in the borough, is also quite deadly, particularly east of its intersection with Kings Highway, where the road widens into what is essentially a highway. Three people have died in car crashes on the stretch in the two-year period between June 2019 and June of this year, with one other fatal crash occurring just off the thoroughfare.
The city’s Department of Transportation in 2015 initiated a plan to implement street safety improvements on Linden as part of the mayor’s Vision Zero program, in which Linden is a “priority corridor” owing to its high number of pedestrian deaths. The city has implemented several measures in the intervening years, including lowering the speed limit to 25 mph and enlarging medians, though street safety advocates contend that the measures are insufficient.
