An NYPD Traffic Enforcement Agent has been arrested in connection with the death of a 7-year-old boy who was fatally struck by a police tow truck as he crossed the street with his mother in Fort Greene on Thursday morning.
Police identified the boy as Kamei Hughes — earlier reports had named him as Kamari Hampton. The 7-year-old lived at Cumberland Walk, just blocks from where he was killed on the way to school near Fort Greene Park.
The driver of the truck, 54-year-old NYPD member Stephanie Sharp, was arrested following the incident at the intersection of North Portland Avenue and Myrtle Avenue on the morning of Oct. 26.
Sharp is facing charges of failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care.
The NYPD said its collision investigation squad determined that Sharp was driving the tow truck westbound on Myrtle Avenue when she made a right turn to travel northbound onto North Portland Avenue. As she turned, Sharp hit Hughes in the crosswalk as he rode his green stand-up scooter.
Witnesses at the scene told Brooklyn Paper the driver of the truck was allegedly using her cell phone when she hit Kamei, who was steps ahead of his mother.
The NYPD said the investigation is ongoing.
According to the commuter advocacy group, Transportation Alternatives, Kamei was the 9th child to die in a traffic incident on NYC streets this year.
The group have accused Mayor Eric Adam’s administration of blocking or delaying infrastructure projects set out in the the NYC Streets Plan.
“New Yorkers have had enough with this administration’s excuses on street safety. How many more children have to die before Mayor Adams takes action?” Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Danny Harris said in a statement Thursday.
Following Kamei’s death, Councilmember Crystal Hudson and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso pulled out of attending a community meeting at Brown Memorial Baptist Church Thursday night as it was slated to critique the Open Streets and Vision Zero initiatives.
In a joint statement to the church’s pastors, the pols said they could not “in good conscience” attend the meeting where Vision Zero will be criticized so close to where a young boy’s life was lost to traffic violence as it “sends the wrong message to the community and borough.”
“We welcome a list of specific concerns from the community that we can address in consultation with the Mayor’s Office and Department of Transportation, but this is not the time to rethink a street safety program that has brought traffic deaths to historic lows in New York City,” the statement reads. “In this time of mourning, our actions should be focused on how to expand street safety measures that prevent more tragic deaths like the one we saw today.”
The meeting was later postponed, as reported by StreetsBlog.
