NYPD: No Charges for Driver Who Killed Man in Brooklyn Crosswalk

By Brad Aaron
Feb 23, 2015

NYPD filed no charges against the driver who killed Martin Hernandez Tufino as he crossed the street in a crosswalk. The red arrow represents the movement of the driver and the white arrow the movement of the victim, according to information released by NYPD. Image: Google Maps

NYPD said charges probably won’t be filed against the driver of a private bus who ran over and killed a man in a Brooklyn crosswalk, though it appears the victim was crossing with the right of way.

Police said Martin Hernandez Tufino, 64, was crossing Avenue M north to south at around 2:11 p.m. Friday when the driver struck him with a Freightliner bus while turning right from Coney Island Avenue, according to Gothamist.

From the Daily News:

The man was in the crosswalk and was caught under the bus’s front wheels. He suffered a massive head injury, horrified witnesses told police.

He died at the scene.

Though Tufino was in a marked crosswalk and would presumably have had the right of way, anonymous police sources told the Daily News “no charges were expected.”

It would not be unusual for the driver in this case to avoid penalty. Since the Right of Way Law took effect last August, motorists have injured and killed thousands of New York City pedestrians, yet as of this month NYPD had applied the law just 17 times.

When I called NYPD to ask about the status of the investigation, I was told to submit my request in an email. This is routine when a member of the department’s public information staff, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to look up or give out information. Not once in my seven years at Streetsblog has an email to NYPD yielded a response.

Tufino was one of at least two pedestrians killed by motorists over the weekend. On Sunday night alleged unlicensed driver Valentine Gonzalez hit an unidentified woman at 76th Street at Woodside Avenue in Queens, then fled the scene, according to Gothamist. Gonzalez was reportedly charged with leaving the scene and driving without a license, but as of this afternoon the case did not appear in an online database of court records.

Last night’s crash occurred in the 110th Precinct, and in the City Council district represented by Danny Dromm. The crash that killed Martin Hernandez Tufino occurred in the 66th Precinct, in the council district represented by David Greenfield.