Koffi Komlani, the cab driver who hit and killed 9-year-old Cooper Stock on 97th street and West End last January, was given a $500 fine and sent on his way at a hearing on Monday. Komlani pleaded guilty to failing to exercise due care and causing serious physical injury; he was fined $500, had his driver’s license suspended and will have to complete a driver safety course. Cooper and his father were walking across the street with the right of way when Komlani plowed into them.
“Judge Erika Edwards said the tragedy was investigated thoroughly and was ‘not a crime,'” the Daily News reported. District Attorney Cy Vance’s office could have pushed for a $750 fine and a 15-day sentence, but he declined to do so, according to the Daily News.
The Taxi & Limousine Commission denied Komlani’s attempt to have his hack license reinstated last July. He can still reapply.
Dana Lerner, Cooper’s mother, sent us the following statement:
It goes without saying that what happened here today does not even begin to bring justice in the death of my son Cooper Stock. Giving this man a traffic ticket for killing my son is an insult to us and to Cooper’s memory. Is a life worth nothing more than a traffic ticket?
Cooper and his father Dr. Richard Stock were following the law. This driver made the decision to drive recklessly and that resulted in my son’s death. Crashes are avoidable if laws are followed. This was not an accident. Video and witness validate this. This was a deliberate decision to not yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk.
We feel strongly that this cab driver should be punished, both for what he did and to send a message to other reckless drivers. When you kill someone in a crash, you should face fines and imprisonment, and at the very least you should no longer be able to drive a car. Driving is a privilege. We feel strongly that this cab driver should no longer have the right to drive. He destroyed our lives with his carelessness, and we don’t want him to ruin another family’s life too.
Komlani spoke briefly with reporters.
“I’m deeply sorry for what happened,” he said in a soft, trembling voice. “I have no words to justify how I feel. I don’t know what happened.”
Council member Helen Rosenthal introduced “Cooper’s Law” last year; under the law the TLC suspends cabbies’ licenses if they kill or injure pedestrians or bicyclists who have the right of way.
How can this judge say there was no crime here? It seems as though pedestrians are seen as collateral damage on the streets of NYC. Cars, trucks, cabs, bikes, have the luxury of driving recklessly while the city’s solution is to crack down on jaywalking.
I’m not a lawyer, so perhaps I’m wrong, but maybe he meant it’s just not a criminal offense. Clearly it’s a civil offense as evidenced by the fine.
Oh, you are definitely not a lawyer. 🙂
Horrified by this outcome and the others like in the past few years. It is unbelievable and uncivilized. A vehicle improperly driven is a deadly weapon, like a gun, a knife, a shod foot. This is at minimum involuntary manslaughter anywhere else. Shame on you, NY!!!!
This is why those who are hurt don’t decide punishment…To use this cab driver’s life as a pawn to send a message to others…that isn’t justice, its vengeance. I’m pretty sure cabbies are well aware they shouldn’t hit people w/their cars.
Excuse me.. It would be wrong to use this cab drivers life to send a message to someone else. Actually, he should go to prison to send a message to him…”you cannot recklessly kill humans and not be punished”. Unfortunately, the judge sent a different message… Its open season on humans on the streets of NYC.
Agreed! While I understand that this family is going through much pain right now, totally undeserved, I fail to see how punishment makes that better. Ethically in a society punishment exists to deter crime and remove offenders from society so they do not continue to offend unchecked, not to exact vengeance upon people who wronged you. I say shame on YOU upper west siders for your vengeful attitudes towards your fellow man!
“Ethically in a society punishment exists to deter crime…”
Precisely. So in this case there was no punishment, so drivers everywhere get the idea that they can run over pedestrians who have the right of way with impunity. No deterrence here, is there?
To be clear that was SHAME ON ALL of You, who have declared your need for “justice” vengeance etc…
For something to be a crime we often look at Mens Rea – the mental state of the person – ie did they intend to commit a crime. The concept being you cannot (should not) be convicted of a crime if you did not intend to commit it.
If you hand someone a beverage that unbeknownst to you was poisonous, and they die did you cause their death? Directly – yes you did, but was that your intention? well if it was your intention then you are guilty of murder, if not then you are not. This may or may not play out in a court depending on the evidence against you, but to be clear if all parties involved were to acknowledge that you did not have the intention to kill or harm then there is no crime in principle.
So back to the issue at hand. If you are telling me that you believe this cabbie was heading down the streets of NY thinking “let me try to kill someone tonight…” and is secretly very happy that he killed a kid, then you are right he should be jailed because that would be a crime, we want to prevent as a society.
But if you believe he was distracted for an instance and accidentally did something (say ran a red light) that caused someones death, then he is not culpable of murder. He is culpable of running a red-light, an act that in this instance clearly would have happened irrespective of whether a person was in his way or not.
So if you believe this was a huge miscarriage of justice, I hope you are exactly EQUALLY outraged by every single person that runs a red-light (or commits whatever traffic infringement this cabbie did), and will insist that Vance pursue a criminal cases against all people who run red lights in the city irrespective of any harm that befell anyone…
Anytime a driver – especially a professional one – violates someone’s right of way and injures or kills, there should be heavy consequences.
Did you read the part of the article here where Komlani applied last July for a reinstatement of his license to drive a taxi, six months after he had killed a 9-year-old in the crosswalk? Or the part where it took DA Cy Vance’s office nearly a year to decide on filing charges for failure to yield and failure to exercise due care while driving? This is a pretty complete systemic breakdown. Vance needs to step up, meet with Families for Safe Streets, and get it together on this issue. If he thinks the laws aren’t strong enough for innocent victims like Cooper, he should speak up to change them.
Shame on WHO? Justice is a pretty fundamental American concept. It’s literally why we employ a DA and have laws! A professional cabbie running over and killing a 9-year-old boy walking hand in hand with his 6-foot-3 dad, in the crosswalk, with the light: this is actually illegal. In pretty much any other state this is manslaughter at the least, but New York is lax and I guess Vance is even more horrifyingly lax-er.
I guess the saddest thing to me is how completely unsurprising this $580 wrist-slap for killing a sweet little kid is from Vance. Ridiculous, gut-wrenching, outrageous. What more can we say.
And yet, this professional driver did. A $580 penalty for that is a total outrage. Cy Vance is never going to win reelection in 2017 or have a shred of respect from the Upper West Side if he doesn’t wake up on this. What are we paying him for, if not to stand up for the life of an innocent child.
He campaigned against the fictional, bogus ‘rule of two’, he broke his campaign principles and hid behind it here, and if he feels the law is not strong enough to protect innocent victims, he hasn’t once spoken up to strengthen the law on behalf of Cooper Stock’s family. Think about the one-year sentence Vance won against Afroduck for speeding around Manhattan island unchecked, or the charges filed against the protester who tossed red paint on Bill Bratton. This shrugging off a UWS boy’s life is absurd and disgusting.
This question’s going to sound pedantic, but the statement describes the driver as “careless” and “reckless” but also says “This was not an accident. Video and witness validate this. This was a deliberate decision . . .”
Is the theory that he hit these people on purpose? If so, that’s kind of a big deal.
I have a good friend who wrote one of the favored texts for EMS and pre-hospital trauma care. In it he says there are no accidents. Any time vehicles collide with each other or a person some part of the system has failed. It could be driver error or negligence. It could be poor maintenance of a vehicle or improper road design but someone has failed. So while the driver may not have set out to hit this child he did not exercise due caution and yield the right of way. If the penal code was adequately written this would be by definition a crime. Sadly in this case it’s just the price of a fancy meal at the Time Warner Building. Is that what a child’s life is worth?
Appreciate the response. I’m not really asking about the philosophy of it all, or whether the driver appears to be liable (he certainly seems to be), but whether his actions were intentional. If he meant to hit these people, that changes everything.
NYC again proves itself to be a backwater laggard in regards to protecting its citizens. While DA Vance jousts with windmills prosecuting everyday citizens who carry common pocket knives, the death of an innocent child goes unpunished. A 500 dollar fine is a sick mockery of justice. Cabbies, cops (Eric Garner) and bus drivers (proposed pedestrian law exemption) apparently have a license to kill. Luckily Rosenthal is focused on important issues like the bike lane on Amsterdam which will help speed food deliveries to hungry Westsiders. Clearly our city government has its priorities straight and is looking out for our best interests.
Of course bleeding hearts will yell how we shouldn’t rush to vengeance. But how about just regular punishment? This animal mowed down a defenseless child and got away scot-free. And he has the nerve to say he doesn’t know what happened.
This sends the message to drivers that you can plow into pedestrians and get only a slap on the wrist. Some justice system.
Perhaps the police could better police murderous drivers if they were not so intent on arresting immigrant single-mothers selling churros in the subway.
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20150406/midtown-east/churros-vendors-brave-arrest-make-living-subway-system
But of course there are no free churros available to police policing drivers.
This is a sadly predictable outrage. Make no mistake, this further emboldens aggressively reckless and intimidating conduct by vehicles toward pedestrians. Go to chat rooms and blogs for the commercial drivers in NY and they openly discuss their knowledge that if they maim or kill you that there will be no consequences. They discuss types of pedestrians they don’t like (e.g. the timing of your being in the cross walk or your pace) and how pedestrians get what they deserve. I was horrified when a friend showed me. Recently, a bus driver completely maimed a teenage girl who was being kind of slow and playful walking through the cross walk. The bus driver was irritated with school kids holding him up and he annihilated her. The head of his union was quoted in the NYTimes story and he never even had to take time off. Watch out NY pedestrians and cyclists. Politicians will never solve this problem. Too few people are killed albeit in a brutal and entirely preventable manner to justify their concern. Fortunately, technology will not only stop these terrible tragedies, but also eliminate these jobs. The commercial drivers will get their commeuppance in the next few years anyway. Stay safe for 5 – 7 years and you’re home free.
I don’t understand how a driver like that would not lose their license after hitting and killing someone who had the right of way… and a taxi driver at that. At the least he should lose his commercial license and pay a much larger fine. What a nightmare. I feel so for the parents.
The NYC cab driver knew or should have known that people cross the street when they have a green light. Accordingly, they have a duty to exercise due care when entering a crosswalk. This driver entered a crosswalk knowing that people cross and that they could be injured or killed by a turning vehicle. Regardless of this fact, he did it anyway. At the least, he is criminally negligent and should have had his license revoked and forced to served at least a minimal amount of jail time. or community service.
Horrifying. Incomprehensible.
This is shameful. My heart breaks for this family—the complete lack of justice for this little boy’s life is truly incomprehensible.
I sure hope to see the same outrage and support of harsh crime and punishment next time an individual who lives on one of our area shelters commits a crime on somebody else.
This is an outrage and a clear miscarriage of justice. One need only to deal with the justice system a time or two to understand it’s one big crapshoot-as evidenced here. My heart goes out to this family. I say to you, Never Give Up! Demand justice for the death of your son! And some recognition that human life in this city has value. The cab driver gets a lesser fine than that of a driver who has their car booted and towed for a few unpaid parking tickets. Pedestrians beware. In NY you can become a statistic in a city out of control. God bless Cooper and his Family.
He belongs in jail. Its vehicular homicide pure and simple
A limo driver side-swiped me from behind, stopped on my foot, and I had to tap on the window to get his attention to ask him to get off my foot. I asked him later why on a bright, clear Sat. morning on Columbus Ave., when I was crossing with the light in a marked crosswalk, and I am six feet tall, how he could not have seen me. He answered, “I turned, I looked, and then I saw you.” Every day I walk miles on these streets, follow the laws, and feel there is a target on my back. If you are a doctor and practice medicine illegally, you lose your license. If you are a stock trader and trade illegally, you lose your license. If you operate a vehicle and take a life, what do you think the punishment should be?
Does anybody know what law applies here and how the judge came to the decision?