A motorcycle rider in his early 30s was hit and killed by a driver while riding through Clinton Hill on June 1.
According to police sources, the 33-year-old Andrew Thomas of Queens was traveling northbound on Classon Avenue at around 1 p.m. and stopped at a red light at Clifton Place, where he was rear-ended by a vehicle and ejected from the bike and pinned under the vehicle. The driver, identified by police as 45-year-old Rachel Golden of Bedford-Stuyvesant, kept driving, dragging Thomas beneath the car.
Thomas was then taken to Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Onlookers placed flowers on a curb beside the roped-off scene of the crash as police investigated the scene, where the victim’s motorcycle remained on its side in the crosswalk.
Golden was arrested shortly after the crash and charged with vehicular manslaughter, operating a motor vehicle impaired by drugs and driving without a license.
The car, a Toyota Venza with temporary New Jersey license plates, had significant damage to the front bumper, and was partway up the curb and grassy median in the hours after the crash. NYPD Highway Patrol is investigating the incident.
That Clinton Hill intersection has been relatively quiet, with just two crashes resulting in two injuries since May 2016, according to Crashmapper, though Classon Avenue is the site of fairly regular crashes and injuries — just a block north, at the intersection of Lafayette Avenue, five people have been injured in four crashes in the last five years. At that same intersection, cyclist Lauren Davis was hit and killed as she pedaled left onto Lafayette Avenue in 2015. Her death led the city to install a bike lane on Classon Avenue.
A few blocks south, at the intersection of the busy Fulton Street, 20 people including 15 drivers, 2 pedestrians, and 3 cyclists have been injured in 13 crashes since 2016.
