A Brooklyn man was killed by a driver in Red Hook on Wednesday night — the second hit-and-run fatality in the borough in less than 24 hours.
Police said Imorne Horton, a 31-year-old resident of the Red Hook Houses, was discovered lying in the street at Hamilton Avenue and Court Street, a heavily-trafficked multi-lane roadway under the elevated Gowanus Expressway. He was rushed to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital just before 7 p.m., and he was pronounced dead on Wednesday evening.
Friends of Horton's told the Daily News that Horton was a special needs man who grew up in the NYCHA building.
“He was such a good neighbor, such a great person, never bothered anyone,” his former babysitter, Dira Novoa, told the outlet. “Always good things to say about him. Always joking, always saying hi.”
According to a preliminary investigation by the NYPD's Collision Investigation Squad, Horton was standing in a traffic lane near the crosswalk when he was struck by a motorist driving west on Hamilton. The motorist did not stop, and had not been arrested as of Thursday afternoon.
The tragedy marks the 16th death of a pedestrian or cyclist on city streets this year. Nine of those fatalities have involved hit-and-run drivers, according to Transportation Alternatives.
Hours before Horton's death, 6-year-old Shimon Fried was killed by the driver of a school bus in South Williamsburg. The bus driver did not stop — but was subsequently pulled over by NYPD officers at a separate location. A spokesperson for the department did not say whether the driver faced charges in that incident.
The two deaths come as the NYPD is facing renewed scrutiny for their enforcement against reckless drivers, after traffic deaths on city streets increased for the second straight year in 2020. Citing the department's failure to properly investigate deadly drivers, members of the City Council are pushing for crash investigations to be removed from the department's purview and transferred to the Department of Transportation.
At a hearing on Wednesday, a representative for the NYPD said that more than 13,000 New Yorkers had been injured in hit-and-runs over the last two years — but said the department didn't have figures about how many arrests were made in those cases.
According to an analysis by Transportation Alternatives, hit-and-run crashes resulted in arrests in just 0.89% of cases last year.
“Every New Yorker lost to traffic violence is a tragedy. And, the growing number of hit-and-runs suggests that our mayor is losing control over his streets to reckless drivers," Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Danny Harris said on Wednesday. "This is compounded by the NYPD’s abysmal record of solving these crimes, making arrests in less than one percent of fatal hit-and-runs. The status quo is not working."
