By Gus Saltonstall
A pedestrian was hit and killed by a van earlier this week on the Upper West Side, police said on Friday.
The collision took place Wednesday around 4:30 a.m. at the intersection of Broadway and West 86th Street, NYPD stated.
After further investigation by the NYPD Highway Collision Investigation Squad, it was determined that a 41-year-old woman was driving a 2012 Ford Econoline van eastbound on 86th Street, with a green traffic signal, when she struck Patrice Brooks, a 57-year-old man.
Brooks lived at Euclid Hall on Broadway and West 86th Street, which is supportive housing run by the nonprofit West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing, according to police.
Brooks had been crossing the 86th Street intersection diagonally, from the northwest corner to the southern center median, when he was hit, police said.
He was rushed to Mount Sinai Morningside, where he was pronounced dead, NYPD added.
The driver of the van remained at the scene and there have been no arrests as the investigation remains ongoing as of Friday morning, police said.
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Very sad. While I hope there will be no comments pointing fingers i’m sure that’s wishful thinking. A tragedy, that’s all that needs to be said.
No, it is not all that needs to be said. Really not. Think about it, next time you cross the street. No more sad, needless deaths would be the best thing to be learned from this tragic event.
The real lesson is that we need improved traffic calming measures so that drivers don’t accidentally commit manslaughter. Let’s not place blame solely on pedestrians. Let’s place blame on poorly designed streets that facilitate accidents by allowing, and even encouraging, both reckless driving and reckless pedestrian crossing.
It was 4:30 am traiffic is usually pretty calm
Perhaps adding a crosswalk between the medians running north to south like they did on Broadway and 96th street. I remember there was a Vision Zero study done to observe how pedestrians were crossing the street.
This is reckless posting. Shame on you. The man was in the middle of an intersection. How is that OK? He obviously did not deserve to die. But blaming the driver for this is truly sick and uncalled for.
The hatred of cars around here is really disgusting and over the top. I feel bad for the poor driver who will likely be scarred for life.
“The man was in the middle of an intersection”…and therefore deserved to be hit? Perhaps this incident will help the driver to Pay More Attention Next Time He Gets Behind The Wheel. If you are driving and you see someone in the road you don’t get to hit them, reasoning “I had the green light, and they shouldn’t have been there.”
Agree 100%. While the pedestrian’s death is a tragedy, blaming either the driver or poorly constructed roads is ridiculous. The pedestrian was crossing the street at pitch-black hours — a time when a person should be extra careful — without heeding the law. While he certainly didn’t deserve to be hit by a car or die, his death could’ve been avoided if he’d used the crosswalk. Why are commenters here hypothesizing about the driver, who responsibly stayed at the scene, being distracted by her phone? They weren’t there, and frankly, one could just as easily hypothesize that the pedestrian was drunk or suicidal — all are ridiculous guesses, especially against the cold facts.
How was this caused by “poorly designed streets that are allowing and even encouraging…reckless driving”? Nothing in the article indicated that the driver was driving recklessly, only that the person hit was crossing recklessly
(which of course doesn’t make it any less an unhappy event).
Yes, crossing recklessly!
There is no indication the driver was being reckless. And how did the street encourage this man to cross at a diagomal.hours before the sun came up?
🙁
Condolences to his loved ones. Even if no one turns out to be at fault, it’s still a tragic loss of life.
Morgan & Morgan
there are no accidents
I think we take vehicular homicide far too lightly in this country, but an unwell person out at 4:30 am veering into oncoming traffic is unfortunately pretty plausible.
Any one know about what happened with the bus and bike in front of PS 199 yesterday?
The bicyclist had a medical issue and ran into the back of the bus.
Accident? Don’t know. Block was closed for 4 hours. Lots of cops, but no EMS.
It’s kind of difficult to not see someone crossing (especially diagonally) a large intersection at 4:30AM. After watching a video of the scene, my guess is that the driver was turning north and was distracted by something like her mobile phone.
Guessing is the problem. Actually, it’s easy not to see someone when it is dark outside in the wee hours of the morning, and the pedestrian was in the middle of the street and not at a crosswalk.
If you can show me ANYWHERE in Manhattan where there’s a main thoroughfare that isn’t list up like a christmas tree, I’ll go along with your reasoning. We have street lights – super useful things. Not sure if they’ve got as far as where you live, but I highly recommend them – if for no other reason than You Can See Pedestrians Who Are Where They Shouldn’t Be, And Avoid Hitting Them With Your Vehicle.
If UWS’ers didn’t guess or speculate, 9 out of 10 of them couldn’t make a comment.
If you diagram the description you’ll see how easily the driver could not see the pedestrian. The driver is headed east, IOW towards Amsterdam. The pedestrian is walking from the n/w corner diagonally, southeastward.
So the pedestrian is to the driver’s left as she’s looking forward in the dark and he enters the field of vision at the last second.
You are correct. It’s only your guess. It is not a fact.
That’s jumping to conclusions. It is a busy intersection with a lot going on. Someone should not be in the middle of it. Personally, it sounds like the driver is the victim and will likely be traumatized for life.
Leon – The true victim here is obviously the deceased man, no matter what the circumstances.
This is true. But it sounds like he was a victim of his own carelessness.
At 4:30AM, it is not a busy intersection with a lot going on. The pedestrian obviously put himself in a dangerous situation by jaywalking diagonally outside of the crosswalks. But it looks like he was hit in the westbound lanes of 86th St while the van was traveling in the eastbound lanes. After the collision, how did the van end up stopping at the SE corner of the intersection? That’s why I guessed the driver was turning and distracted. Might have tried to steer away to the right (while turning left) but it was too late to avoid the pedestrian.
Where did you get this information that it “looks like” he was hit in the westbound lane or where the vehicle stopped after the collision? These details are not in the above article.
There is a video of the accident scene that shows where the impact was and where the van stopped. Not hard to find online.
I disagree. The reason the crosswalks have black amd white stripes is so your eye will pick up when something is crossing and changing the pattern. Crossing diagonally means this isn’t happening especially in the middle of the night. A pedestrian is just a black blob on a black background. Difficult to see.
Has the Jay Walking violation been officially removed yet?
Yes, it was officially not a violation anymore after April 17, 2025. That said, you still have to watch out for anything moving on the street while crossing. It is not carte blanche to just walk anywhere without (sometimes deadly) consequences.
Who is Jay Walking?
Boris:
The guy who died.
Can’t believe there are 11 people who gave this post a thumbs up and didn’t get my comment.
What the van travelling at under 30MPH, and was the driver NOT looking at his smartphone?
I agree that the pedestrians was not pedestrianing correctly, but any attentive driver should have noted the less than safe intersection crossing by the pedestrian.
How do you know there weren’t cars there that made it impossible to avoid the deceased. Why should someone expect to see someone in the middle of the street? Was he even visible or was he wearing dark clothes which made him hard to see in the dark.
The race to blame the driver is horrifying and embarrassing. Typical UWS know-it-alls trying to hypothesize and show how smart they are but only making us look like clowns that Fox News makes us out to be.
People should not be walking in the middle of the street in the dark. Full stop. End of story. I am very sorry that he died – it is horrible.
Stopping is impossible?
If someone can’t see someone in the middle of the street during daylight or in darkness, that first someone should not be driving under any circumstances. Driving a car is not simply about the mechanics of steering and braking at lights. It means being aware.
If West 86th Street were a limited access highway, even Henry Hudson would qualify, then that would be different. But the speed limit in Manhattan is 25 MPH.
It’s not really hard at all to imagine a situation where it’s virtually impossible for a safe, law-abiding driver to avoid hitting a pedestrian. Not too long ago, I watched a woman push her stroller into traffic on Riverside drive in the middle of the block between two parked SUVs. An oncoming motorist was able to (barely) stop in time. If he’d been even ten feet farther down the block, he would not have been able to stop in time.
You’ve changed the terms to someone popping out from the sidewalk, from behind a parked SUV.
I specified that the pedestrian was in the middle of the street/intersection, because that’s what the reporting says.
What you did doesn’t help here.
I fully agree. sad but the man cross against the light in the path of oncoming traffic. The poor driver will replay this in her mind for the rest of her life. When you cross a road there could be cars so pay attention cross with the light in the cross walk and make eye contact with the drive.
And the driver wasn’t looking out for that kind of thing, and was likely going well above the speed limit.
“was likely going well above the speed limit”–totally made-up speculation/accusation on your part. So easy to make something up and just decide it’s true…
Lee,
It’s not at all speculation, I’ve seen many cars speed through that intersection, especially late at night.
I can’t help it if you’re not familiar with Broadway and West 86th Street.
And I’ve seen many cars go through that intersection at or below the speed limit. Stop making things up. You know what happens when you assume…
As someone else noted, once again the anti-car group is rearing its ugly head. Please stop it.
I think we should have more content about all of the pedestrians and bike riders who constantly are breaking the law. Unfortunately, this is the perfect example of it. Yet it is somehow being turned into an anti-car rant rather than a “cross more safely” rant.
A false equivalence/balance.
That some drivers pay attention and obey the law at that intersection (or others) doesn’t mean drivers don’t speed through that intersection regularly.
Not anti car, anti-non enforcement of traffic laws by the NYPD.
Pedestrians breaking the law have much less momentum than ebike drivers and cars.
You’re really digging a hole for yourself.
You’re also making an assumption based on seeing cars speeding through that intersection. How is that different than his assumption based on seeing cars go through at or below the speed level? You can’t apply the false equivalence/balance label just because you have a different hypothesis.
Boris,
Are you joking? I answered that silliness in my second paragraph above. One (law obeying drivers) doesn’t preclude the other (drivers regularly speeding through that intersection).
If the driver, were paying attention to driving, not a cellphone, and going 25 MPH, it is unlikely the pedestrian would have been hit, whether or not he was jay walking.
Similarly, the e-bike driver who killed the Jing Fong manager at Amsterdam and 78th about 3 years ago, were he paying attention, hadn’t likely run the red light, and was not using a cellphone, the restaurant manager would still be alive.
This is a tragic story. At 4:30am, even a big intersection like Broadway and 86th Street is pretty empty at that hour. If you were driving east on 86th Street and you had a green light, would you notice someone walking diagonally across the intersection out your left window? Terrible and awful. A reminder to cross NY streets as if those traffic lights can save your life, which they can, even at 4:30 in the morning, but you have to obey them.
Pedestrians don’t make it easy for drivers in NYC and their errant behavior in the roadways is responsible for a significant number of vehicular fatalities and injuries. Not saying that vehicles are blame-free, but pedestrians really make driving unpredictably dangerous.
No reason pedestrians should given how badly the NYPD enforces traffic laws.
“their errant behavior”? Like what?
Like walking around literally in the middle of busy traffic at an intersection.
That’s not a traffic law.
Since you’re being so pedantic, jaywalking is classified as a pedestrian traffic law.
Boris,
You missed my point.
Since you went to Mount Sinai Morningside, there was clearly going to be no other outcome
I have just read 30 comments. Not one of the people posting about this sad event was at the scene. Yet many feel free to make baseless, accusatory, and downright inflammatory comments. WHY??
Very sad indeed. It should be noted that the first recorded instance of a pedestrian killed by a motor vehicle occurred here on the Upper West Side.
“On September 13, 1899, at West 74th Street and Central Park West in New York City, Henry Hale Bliss, a 69-year-old local real estate dealer, was alighting from a south bound 8th Avenue trolley car when he was struck by the driver of an electric-powered taxicab.” Wikipedia.
It’s terrible that after 126 years, things like this still happen…
The 96th Street and 86th Street crossing are very dangerous to begin with. Cars can be going north south east and west or turning. Often drivers will jump the red and turn. All of the above makes it very unsafe for the innocent pedestrian crossing the street. Maybe turning on the red should be against the law even in the middle of the night if there isn’t traffic. Going near 30 is still too fast. The speed limit should be lowered. Only the investigators can determine or try to determine what really happened. This is a sad tragedy for a man just crossing from one side of the street to the other. They really should do more about these 96th Street and 86th Street crossings.
Turning on the red is illegal. Always.
I’m always curious how they confirm the driver had the green light in these situations? And no mention if they were driving under the 25mph speed limit?