Driver Fatally Strikes Man In Williamsburg, Then Abandons Vehicle And Walks Away

A driver fatally struck a private sanitation worker and then fled the scene in Williamsburg on Saturday morning, according to police and news reports.

The driver of a 2005 Honda Odyssey was driving near Havemeyer and Hope streets in Williamsburg when they hit 52-year-old Angel Aguilar-Duran about 8 a.m. Saturday, according to the NYPD.

The Daily News reported that Aguilar-Duran had been assisting his co-worker, a garbage truck driver for Cogent Waste Solutions, reverse down the block when the impatient minivan driver attempted to go around the garbage truck and hit Aguilar-Duran. The driver abandoned the minivan and walked off.

Emergency medical personnel took Aguilar-Duran to Bellevue Hospital, where the Bushwick resident died, according to police.

A spokesperson for the NYPD said Sunday morning no one had been arrested and a description of the driver was also unknown.

A passenger in the minivan at first helped elevate the vehicle up in order to get the sanitation worker out from beneath the car, witnesses told the Daily News. But then the passenger eventually walked away from the crash too, according to the tabloid.

Video from a CitizenApp user shows a Cogent Waste Solutions sanitation truck and a light blue minivan at the intersection, where police were setting up crime scene tape.

Aguilar-Duran's reported employer, Cogent Waste Solutions, did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Fifteen pedestrians have died in street crashes this year through the end of March, according to data from Crashmapper. Among thousands of crashes mapped around the five boroughs, 1,436 pedestrians had also been injured in 2021. Through the end of March last year, 29 pedestrians had died and 2,265 had been injured.

Though traffic deaths plummeted during the city's COVID-19 lockdown, deaths of drivers, passengers, and motorcyclists spiked as speeding on city streets soared, making 2020 the deadliest year on record since Mayor Bill de Blasio launched the Vision Zero initiative in 2014, intended to reduce traffic fatalities to zero.