Around a dozen people lit candles and huddled outside a decrepit deli in Queensbridge at half past midnight this morning to remember Ryo Oyamada, the 24-year-old student who was killed by a speeding NYPD cruiser at the spot exactly one year ago to the hour. "Before he came to New York he said his dream was to ride a bicycle to cross over the Brooklyn Bridge," Ryo's sister, Tomoko Suzuki said. "But he didn't get to. He was here for only three months before he died."
Witnesses and those nearby when Oyamada was killed—shortly after leaving the deli at 40th Avenue and 10th Street—say that the police car was traveling at a high rate of speed and without its lights or sirens on.
"They didn't put sirens on until two more patrol cars put on their sirens," one witness told us. "There were no overhead lights on, none."
Ryo Oyamada
The City and the NYPD have disputed this, claiming that the officers were responding to a call for an assault with a knife and had engaged both lights and sirens, and that video taken from a nearby NYCHA surveillance camera proves it. Yet the NYPD has yet to turn over that video to City attorneys or the attorney for Oyamada's family, who is suing the City and the police department for $8 million in federal court.
"The driver of this vehicle, a police officer sworn to protect and serve, could have done the right thing—the honorable thing—and admitted to his actions," said the family's attorney, Christopher Fitzgerald. "Instead, this officer turned on his lights and sirens after the fact, and fabricated his report of the incident, saying that this was Ryo's fault."
Orion Brown, Ryo's former roommate in Queensbridge, said that it's not unusual to see police cruisers speed without lights or sirens. "They drive around here fast and on the sidewalks," Brown said. "They cruise around here with super speed, no lights, no sirens."
When the NYPD's judgment was questioned in August after an officer fatally shot 14-year-old Shaaliver Douse, the department released surveillance video to exonerate the officer. The City has so far ignored the letters and pleas from Oyamada's family to release the evidence.
"At first, I was not sure about the lawsuit," said Oyamada's other sister Kaoru, who traveled from Kobe to be at the memorial. "But then I thought…He was the kind of person who wanted to prove. He wanted to prove what happened."
"He loved New York," Tomoko added. "I don't want to hate New York. I want to try my best to get through and behind his death."
As the vigil ended, 25-year-old Anthony Josey, a lifelong Queensbridge resident, pulled his car over to ask why the candles were lit. Josey said he remembered when Oyamada was killed. "The police speed around here all the time."
