Attention Albany: NYC’s First Traffic Death of 2018 Was a Brutal Hit-and-Run. Do Something.
Jun Sum Yim, 77, was hit in the 109th Precinct, in Flushing. State lawmakers have repeatedly failed to fix laws that give drivers an incentive to flee after a serious crash.
NYPD has arrested a Flushing motorist for running over and dragging a senior to her death and fleeing the scene.
Jun Sum Yim, 77, was the first person killed in city traffic in 2018, according to NYPD’s TrafficStat. Yim was crossing Parsons Boulevard near 32nd Avenue just after 7:00 a.m. Wednesday, outside a church where she had attended morning mass, when 58-year-old Geum Min hit her with a Toyota Corolla, according to reports.
WNBC said video showed the perpetrator pulling the victim down the street with the car before driving away.
Yim, who lived near the crash site, was pronounced dead at Flushing Hospital Medical Center. She had four children, according to WNBC, and her husband died about a year ago.
“Imagine your mother, your grandmother, any special person laying on that floor,” Mimi Yim, the victim’s daughter, told WABC. “What would you do?”
Police tracked down Min and arrested her at her home at around 12:30 a.m. today, the Daily News reported. Min was charged with leaving the scene, failure to yield, and failure to exercise due care, reports said. She was not charged for the act of killing Yim.
Relatively weak penalties prescribed by state law give motorists an incentive to flee after a serious crash. Prosecutors have for years urged state legislators to strengthen hit-and-run laws, but Assembly and Senate leaders have never made it a priority. A bill to elevate hit-and-run penalties stalled in committee in both houses in 2017.
Yim was killed in the 109th Precinct, where motorists killed at least four people walking last year, and four pedestrians in 2016, according to crash data tracked by Streetsblog.
In 2015, when drivers killed six pedestrians in the precinct, NYPD conducted a high-profile crackdown on walking. The crackdown was endorsed by local electeds, including Peter Koo, who represents the City Council district where yesterday’s fatal crash occurred.
A driver who failed to yield killed 3-year-old Allison Liao in a crosswalk in the 109th Precinct in 2013.
On an average day last year, officers in the 109th Precinct ticketed three drivers for failing to yield to pedestrians and issued between two and three speeding summonses.
