UPDATE: Pedestrian Killed by Hit-and-Run Truck Driver at Horrible Flatbush Intersection
Update | Police have now released a video of the truck driver who cops say hit and killed a pedestrian at a notorious intersection in Flatbush early Wednesday morning and kept on driving as she died in the street.
Police say that the trucker, driving a blue flatbed 18-wheeler, fatally struck Linda Douglass, 67, as she crossed Flatbush Avenue at the intersection of Nostrand Avenue, killing her. He fled and is currently being sought.
The “flatbed tractor trailer” had been traveling northbound on Flatbush at around 4:48 a.m., when it hit Douglass, who had just exited a van and was crossing from east to west on the commercial strip, police said. The NYPD declined to give more information, citing an ongoing investigation.
Cops are asking anyone with information to call the CrimeStoppers hotline at 800-577-8477 (TIPS). Police say all calls will be kept confidential.
Residents of the area know it as a dangerous crossing.
GM Derick. You’re in my neighborhood. I know this intersection well and it terrifies me every time I have to cross there, I make sure nothing is moving before I set foot on it.
— Ann Byer (@annbye) April 3, 2019
Statistics bear out locals’ fear.
In just 2018 alone, there were 89 crashes in the one-block radius of the poorly designed, free-for-all intersection. Five cyclists and 14 pedestrians were injured.
To put that carnage in context, the 70th Precinct is one of the most dangerous places on earth, with car drivers causing roughly 3,400 crashes in just 2018, injuring 117 cyclists and 271 pedestrians, killing one.