The outdoor seating area where the crash took place on Ditmars Boulevard and 35th Street in Astoria. (Photo: Christina Santucci)
April 30, 2021 By Allie Griffin
A reckless driver struck a scooter, plowed into multiple cars and careened into an outdoor dining structure in Astoria last night—killing one man and injuring a woman.
The out-of-control driver, a 60-year-old woman, was allegedly speeding in a 2013 Mercedes Benz C-300 northbound on 35th Street around 7:45 p.m. when she fatally struck a 37-year-old Elmhurst man on a 2019 Yamaha Chappy motorcycle, police said.
Her path of destruction continued on the busy street as she then hit two parked cars on the east side of 35th Street and slammed into an outdoor dining set-up at Rosatoro Restaurant, located on the corner of Ditmars Boulevard. The car finally came to rest inside the dining area.
Flying debris from the dining structure hit a 32-year-old woman who was eating at the restaurant.
Officers responding to the crash found the scooter driver, Xing Lin, unconscious and unresponsive lying in the roadway with severe body trauma. The 32-year-old woman was also in the roadway and suffered trauma to both legs, but was conscious, police said.
EMS rushed both crash victims to Elmhurst Hospital, where the man was pronounced dead. The woman is listed in stable condition, police said.
The driver was also taken to hospital and is in stable condition.
Police have not made any arrests and the investigation remains ongoing.
The outdoor seating area where the crash took place on Ditmars Boulevard and 35th Street in Astoria. (Photo: Christina Santucci)
The outdoor seating area where the crash took place on Ditmars Boulevard and 35th Street in Astoria. (Photo: Christina Santucci)
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16 Comments
“The NYPD Highway Division is still finalizing its report, looking into everything including how fast the woman was driving.
Police say the driver is still in the hospital and has not been arrested or charged.”
TRANSLATION: The City don’t care (Mayor’s Office / ‘Zero Vision’) and the NYPD (i.e., 114th Pct) surely don’t care. They will continue to say ‘investigation is still ongoing’, the idea being that eventually, the community, the victim’s family, etc. will tire of constantly badgering the NYPD for more information and will eventually ‘give up’ (his family) or ‘forget’ (the community). This is a classic tactic employed by police forces, especially since they are so ‘sympathetic’ to car people…to the ‘car culture’ in NYC. Show me one NYPD cop who doesn’t own a 2-ton Suburban Assault Vehicle and I’ll show you someone who’s Not an NYPD cop.
This woman needs to be brought up on Vehicular Manslaughter, if not Involuntary Manslaughter, or at the VERY LEAST, have her driving PRIVILEGES (and indeed, being able to barrel 2-ton vehicles down PUBLIC STREETS is indeed, a PRIVILEGE…) …her driving PRIVILEGES need to be PERMANENTLY REVOKED.
For shame!!! This poor, poor man who worked so tirelessly, delivering food to folks who are LUCKY enough to be able to afford to pay someone else to prepare and deliver their food to their front door. These delivery guys work SO HARD, for every penny they earn. They work rain or shine, in torrential downpour and snow. In oppressive heat and chilling cold. They are underappreciated….just nameless/faceless ‘immigrants’ to whom we toss a few measly dollars.
He now leaves behind a wife and two young children. He was also helping to support his parents, back in China.
When are New Yorkers (the Majority of whom do NOT own vehicles) going to revolt and take back OUR streets???!!
ENUF.
We are motorists always speeding in such densely populated areas????? No respect for anyone else , except their own selfish needs….,
Soo no one is gonna tell us this drivers name? Suspicious if you ask me
To be fair, you cannot cite the driver as “reckless” without substantiated proof. An element of reckless driving includes “willful disregard”, therefore if there was an issue of, say, a medically-induced emergency (think heart attack, stroke, seizure), then this would not technically constitute reckless driving.
Certain inherent risks are presented when you have a mix of cars, bicycles, mopeds, etc. AND possibly unsafe outdoor dining setups beyond the street curb. These new sheds have to be strictly reviewed for safety compliance, adequate measurement of distance beyond the curb, and safety against possible motor vehicle collisions, etc.
I suspect this is a tragic result of many negatives factors at place, not just the driver.
Terrible accident but I wonder how they determined that the car driver was speeding? A crappy driver going at 25mph could cause similar destruction – it doesn’t take too much for a 3000lb vehicle to kill a person or to destroy one of those flimsy street dining structures.
Eye witnesses confirm she was speeding, as does the video footage from inside the restaurant. I mean, for her to hit two vehicles, plus the victim, plus the outdoor dining structure, PLUS a tree…..and STILL plow through the side of the restaurant at such a speed? All the various things she hit (along with the unfortunate victim) should have slowed down her speed, somewhat. So what does THAT tell ya?
Um yeah, she was excessively speeding, all right.
…but to cause all that destruction after hitting a human on a bike…. two cars…a TREE…an outdoor dining structure…and STILL plow through the side of a restaurant, and at the speed that it did?? Did you even SEE the video of her plowing into the restaurant? Had to be going at least 50 mph
The driver killed someone. Witnesses said she was speeding at a ridiculous speed. Why wasn’t she charged? I hope it wasn’t because the victim was “only” an Asian scooter driver.
no arrests?
allegedly?
good job .
Flimsy outdoor restaurant structures in streets,and adjacent to speeding traffic were a remporary emergency measue to keep those restaurants alive in an unprecedented pandmic lock-down. But utimately these steeet stuctures are an unwise & deangerouys measure , just waiting for tragedies like ths to happen, both now and in the future. As the city and it’s restaurants & bars come back, we need to resume leaving the streets to traffice- and NOT having them filledd filled with patrons subjected to both sudden injury and unhealthy pollution. Likewise, as restauaants & bars come back there is no excuse for relaxing the regulations on noise and time limits on backyeard extensions (and sidewalk seating) in residential neighborhoods, where qulaity of life neeeds eds to be protected and balance dagainst business needs or wants.
Wake up, the outside structures had nothing to do with some Nasty, Angry person speeding because of a slow driver in front of Her causing the death of some poor soul trying to earn a living for his family.
I’m not really sure I understood if you were saying streets should or should not be for people/diners vs cars.
But as for your implying that these outdoor dining structures had something to do with this particular ‘accident’, or other accidents, clearly many pedestrians/cyclists are killed by cars, and on streets which never had or currently have no street dining structures.
It is beyond preposterous that we allow pedestrians and cyclists, who are so unbelievably VULNERABLE, to have to be in such proximity with 2-ton Suburban Assault Vehicles. We need MORE sidewalk space, completely SEPARATED bike lanes (where no asshole drivers can ‘idle’ or use for speeding past another car), more BUS ONLY streets (NO private use vehicles allowed, thereby ensuring that buses can move many people about, QUICKLY), etc.
The future of dense cities such as NYC is NOT cars. It is pedestrians and cyclists.
Just as we did with cigarette smoking (where we allowed ‘rights’ of the minority to negatively impact the majority, and where we considered it ‘normal’ for the longest time and simply ‘accepted it’) so too will it one day be regarding the use of private vehicles in dense cities.
There is nothing remotely normal about it. We did a complete 360 with how we now view cigarette smoking and its impact on others. We can do the same re: cars.
A Mercedes driven by a leadfooted idiot in Astoria-shocked this doesn’t happen with regularity.
Arrest this degenerate now! We can’t have people driving like this in our neighborhood!
Ban Cars
Haha this is great. Soon they will. Open streets, what open streets re, keep the streets open!!!