Cyclist Olga Cook was struck and killed in BPC last June by Samuel Silva, who agreed this week to plead guilty to the hit-and-run incident.
BY COLIN MIXSON
The driver who struck and killed bicyclist Olga Cook in Battery Park City last June has agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence, the defendant’s attorney said.
Defendant Samuel Silva remains adamant that he was not at fault in the collision that claimed Cook’s life, according to his lawyer, but wasn’t willing to risk the seven years in prison Judge James Burke promised if he was found guilty at trial.
“Sam believes this was an accident, but he couldn’t risk seven years in jail as opposed to 16 months, so, after long conversations with him and his family, he decided this was his best option,” said attorney Nicholas Ramcharitar.
Silva, 26, hung a right in his truck onto Chambers St. off a southbound lane of the West Side Highway on June 11, and collided with the Upper West Side cyclist as she crossed Chambers St. heading north along the Hudson River Greenway.
Instead of stopping immediately, the defendant instead sped off and parked his truck three-blocks away from the scene of the accident, where off-duty MTA officer Otis Noboa apprehended him.
Sobriety tests found that Silva had been intoxicated at the time of the accident, and while reports differ on his blood-alcohol content — Ramcharitar claims he was clocked at .032 BAC, but attorneys for Cook’s husband, Travis Maclean, stated his BAC at .062 — both put him under the legal limit of .08 BAC.
Prosecutors had originally sought the maximum seven-year sentence for Silva — regardless of his plea — leaving the defendant no choice but to take his chances in court, according to Ramcharitar.
“From an attorney and client’s standpoint, when the offer was the maximum you can get, there’s no other option than to go to trial,” the attorney said.
Under the current deal, Silva will serve a reduced sentence of between 16 months and four years in exchange for pleading guilty to felony charges of Leaving the Scene of an Accident and Criminally Negligent Homicide, in addition to a Driving While Impaired violation, Ramcharitar said.
If given the minimum sentence, Silva, who has spent the last 8 months in jail, could be released within a year’s time, his attorney said.
Maclean and his legal team were pleased that Silva copped to the most serious charge of Leaving the Scene of an Accident, and are hopeful Judge Burke will slap the defendant with the new maximum of four-years in prison at his sentencing on Feb. 22, according to Maclean’s attorney, Daniel Flanzig. But Maclean said he doesn’t think Sliva should have gotten a deal at all.
“I think he got a better deal than he deserves,” Maclean said. “I think he realizes at this point that the evidence is against him and he would have served a full sentence if it went to trial.”
A native Brazilian, Silva also faces deportation following his prison sentence, a potentially worse fate given the fact he immigrated when he was 9-years old, according to Flanzig.
“Being sent back to a country you hardly know could be worse than the jail time,” Flanzig said.
The intersection of Chambers St. and the West Side Highway where Cook was struck has a long history of car accidents, with 17 collisions in the last 5 years resulting in serious injuries, including several involving southbound motorists turning onto the Greenway, according to the city.
The city moved quickly to enhance safety at the intersection following Cook’s death, altering traffic signal patterns there, in addition to installing new bollards and repainting crosswalks.
But Maclean is pursuing a civil suit against the city and state for not remediating unsafe conditions at the notoriously accident-prone intersection before his wife was killed, contending that both the city and state were well aware of the dangerous conditions in the years leading up to Cook’s death, and thus bear some resposnibility.
On that, at least, Silva and Cook’s family are in agreement.
“Not only has counsel for the deceased stated that things need to change at that intersection, but the city recognized that and moved to immediately change the conditions there,” said Ramcharitar. “We got this [plea] offer because it was an accident.”
