Three people were killed and four more were hospitalized in three Brooklyn and Bronx car crashes within less than 24 hours Saturday and Sunday, including an elderly man in a wheelchair, according to police.
The violence on the roads began on Feb. 5 at 4:45 p.m. in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, when a driver slammed into 99-year-old Jack Mikulincer, who was trying to cross Oriental Boulevard at Coleridge Street heading north.
The senior citizen was using an electric wheelchair scooter and was less than a block away from his home.
Photos from the scene show a high-visibility vest draped over his scooter, which was bent out of shape from the impact.
The driver of a BMW SUV remained on scene and was not charged, cops said.
The intersection of Coleridge and Oriental has no crosswalks in the direction Mikulincer was trying to go and there are no north-south pedestrian crossings for three blocks in either direction on the two-way boulevard bisecting the suburban southern Brooklyn enclave.
Since 2011, there have been crashes with injuries at almost every intersection of Oriental Boulevard, including two deaths at Beaumont Street and West End Avenue, according to the website NYC Crash Mapper.
A law that took effect at the beginning of the year tasked the Department of Transportation with responding to serious crash sites, in addition to NYPD, to analyze any possible street safety improvements.
DOT spokesman Vincent Barone said the agency cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.
Early Sunday morning just before 2:10 a.m. on Feb. 6, two drivers collided on Eastern Parkway and Rogers Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, killing an 18-year-old female passenger and injuring four others.
Cops said the 18-year-old male driver of the first car had fled a previous police stop and was heading west on Eastern Parkway with the fatal victim and two other 19-year-old men in tow. A police spokesman did not say what he was being stopped for.
The young driver then collided with a 61-year-old motorist who was heading north on Rogers Avenue, cops said.
Paramedics rushed the 18-year-old driver and the young woman to Kings County Hospital, both in critical condition, where she succumbed to her wounds. Police are waiting to notify her family before publishing her identity.
The two remaining 19-year-old male passengers in the first car and the other driver, a 61-year-old woman, were also brought to the public hospital in stable conditions, according to police.
Cops took the 18-year-old driver into custody, but have yet to charge him.
Three hours later in the Bronx at 5:13 a.m. on Feb. 6, a 50-year-old male driver lost control of his car and plowed into a highway barrier on the Bronx River Parkway heading south near East Fordham Road, according to police.
Paramedics brought him to Jacobi Hospital where he was pronounced dead, but his identity has also yet to be released pending family notification.
