By Albert Amateau
Irene Yevelson, an elderly Penn South resident, died shortly after noon on Fri., May 4, when a truck hit her as she was walking downtown across Ninth Ave. at the corner of 23rd St.
The Metropolitan Lumber truck was making a left turn from Ninth Ave. onto 23rd St. when it hit the victim. Yevelson was taken to Bellevue Hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival. The driver stopped and was not charged with any traffic violation in connection with the accident
Yevelson, in her 70s and a longtime resident of the Penn South co-op, was retired from her job at the federal Social Security office. The corner where she was fatally struck is notoriously dangerous especially to residents of the Penn South co-op with a majority of seniors.
“It is Chelsea’s dead man’s curve,” said John Tepper Martin, whose apartment on the top floor of a building on 22nd St. and Ninth Ave. overlooks the accident site. Martin recalled an incident about 20 years ago when four people sitting in a diner on the southwest corner of 23rd St. and Ninth Ave. were killed when a car crashed through the front window.
