News: Pedestrian Fatalities on Long Island
(Long Island, N.Y.) A sixteen-year-old girl was struck and killed last night while crossing the Northern State Parkway in Dix Hills. The incident occurred at roughly eleven-thirty after the teen had attended a house party in a nearby area. The collision occurred near Exit 42 which leads to Route 231, Deer Park Avenue.
The driver of the vehicle was a thirty-one-year-old man from Holbrook, Long Island. Police say that he stayed in the area after the incident and alerted emergency services. The sixteen-year-old Dix Hills girl was pronounced dead at the scene by a medic from the Dix Hills Fire Department.
No charges have been filed against the driver who claims that the teen darted in front of his vehicle. Police and authorities are urging anyone with more information to call their hotline.
In another incident, a sixty-three-year-old female pedestrian was struck and killed by a Nassau County Police Department patrol car at roughly a quarter-to-eleven on Saturday night. The driver of the vehicle was identified as a Nassau County officer from the Seventh Precinct. The officer was traveling eastbound on Merrick Road and hit the woman near Farmers Avenue in Bellmore.
Weather conditions could have caused the officer’s vision to have been impaired by a rainstorm that night, and both he and the pedestrian were taken to a local hospital. The woman was taken by ambulance and pronounced dead at roughly eleven-thirty that evening, less than an hour after the accident. The officer was on patrol at the time of the collision, but is not believed to have been responding to an emergency call.
The officer was treated by hospital staff for contusions and bruises to his knees, but was released shortly after. It’s uncertain whether he will return to duty, and details concerning the case have not been released because the investigation is ongoing. Reports have stated that Homicide Squad detectives are looking into the case.
A more infamous example of pedestrian fatality occurred overseas on July 15th, 1958. In a similar incident Julia Lennon, the mother of the late rock legend John Lennon, was killed while crossing the street by the vehicle of an off-duty constable. The departed icon was just eighteen years of age at the time of his mother’s death.
Julia had been visiting her sister, the aunt of Lennon who is attributed with raising him. A friend of Lennon’s who came to call on him found the women talking cheerfully at the front gate. Though Lennon had frequent visits with his mother, he was not home at the time of the incident.
Lennon’s friend escorted Julia to a nearby bus stop and left her at roughly nine-thirty that night; Julia proceeded to cross the street which consisted of two lanes of traffic. Moments later, he heard a loud sound and turned to see her body travel a hundred feet in the air after the collision. After rushing to Lennon’s aunt, the pair waited for the arrival of an ambulance.
The forty-four-year-old could not be revived and Lennon waited at the hospital while doctors did what they could to save her life. The driver of the vehicle was suspended on all charges following a short suspension from duty, but later left the force to become a postman. In an ending just as tragic as his mother’s, forty-year-old Lennon was shot and killed on December 8th, 1980 by a deranged man who waited outside his New York City apartment.
