"7 killed as van plunges off highway into Bronx Zoo" New York Times, April 30, 2012
NEW YORK - Seven people were killed on Sunday after a minivan that they were in lost control and fell several dozen feet from a Bronx River Parkway overpass, coming to rest in an area of the Bronx Zoo, law enforcement officials said.
Three of the victims in the one-vehicle accident were children, said a spokesman for the fire department, Jim Long. All of the dead were in the minivan; the police said they were from one Bronx family.
The accident occurred around 12:30 p.m. on the southbound lanes of
the parkway, just north of East 180th Street. A police spokesman said
the minivan was heading south in the passing lane when it lost control
and struck the median; witnesses told the police that it appeared that a
tire had blown.
The guardrail had no scars from the minivan, since there was no impact; police investigators said the vehicle hit a curb that propelled it directly over the guardrail and into a wooded area, landing upside-down.
“Sometimes you come upon events that are horrific and this is one of them,’’ Deputy Chief Ronald Werner, of Division 7, said at a news conference less than three hours after the accident.
The victims included two grandparents, an 85-year-old man and his 81-year-old wife; their two daughters, 45 and 39; and three grandchildren, ages 10, 7, and 3, the police said.
An official with the Bronx Zoo said the van landed within the zoo’s southeast boundary, away from any exhibits. Much of the zoo’s 265 acres are wooded and not in use.
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Related: Victims' kin critical of New York road
Also see: Big Apple to get 'apple green' taxis
"4 police officers hurt in Brooklyn shootout" Associated Press, April 09, 2012
NEW YORK - Four New York police officers were wounded but expected to recover after a shootout with a man barricaded in a Brooklyn home with a number of weapons, police said Sunday. The man was also wounded.
The encounter began Saturday night when authorities received a 911 call about a man with a gun arguing with moving company employees, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Sunday.
Authorities arrived at the building and determined the man was in his sixth-floor apartment with his girlfriend and their infant son. The woman and the child got out of the home, and then police entered.
Kelly said the man started shooting at the officers, firing 12 times. Three were shot in their legs and a bullet grazed the face of the fourth officer. All were in stable condition Sunday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
The man was shot in the abdomen and was hospitalized.
Kelly said the man, Nakwon Foxworth, had been released from prison in 2010 after serving 10 years for charges including attempted murder and robbery.
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Look out above!
"Crane owner cleared in deadly collapse" April 27, 2012
NEW YORK - A construction crane owner was acquitted of manslaughter and all other charges Thursday in the May 2008 collapse of his 200-foot-tall rig that snapped apart and killed two workers, which fueled concerns about crane safety.
James Lomma sat expressionless, looking frozen, as a judge announced his verdict in the only criminal trial stemming from the accident on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Lomma chose not to have a jury in the two-month trial.
The victims’ relatives shook their heads as Lomma and his two companies were acquitted.
The case marked Manhattan prosecutors’ second try at holding someone criminally responsible for two deadly crane collapses that came within two months of each other in 2008. Together, the fallen cranes killed nine people and spurred new safety measures.
The crane was starting work on the 14th floor of what was to be a 32-story building when the top portions of the rig came off, crashed into a building across the street, and plummeted.
The crane operator, Donald C. Leo, 30, died after nearly being decapitated. Ramadan Kurtaj, 27, a sewer company employee who was working on the ground, was pulled from the wreckage and died at a hospital.
The dead men’s families and their lawyers called the verdict an injustice and an alarming signal for the safety of those who work and live around cranes.
“The judge took a knife to our family’s heart by letting this man walk away,’’ said Kurtaj’s cousin, Xjevahire Kurtaj-Sinanaj.
To Leo’s family, it was particularly stinging to see Lomma succeed with a defense that partly blamed the slain crane operator for the collapse.
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Related: NY Building Inspectors Go to the Bathroom
Out-of-town:
"Elderly couple die in crash aftermath" ASSOCIATED PRESS, May 12, 2012
ANDES, N.Y. - An elderly Manhattan couple whose car became stuck near their wooded Catskills vacation home died after nine fruitless attempts to make a cellphone call for help and after the woman searched in vain for a neighbor.
Arthur Morris, 88, was driving when their car slid down an embankment 60 feet from their vacation home on May 3 in Andes, about 115 miles northwest of New York City, according to state police and relatives.
Family members told the New York Daily News that Morris
tried to get out but became wedged between the tilted car and the ground
and was asphyxiated. His wife, 89-year-old Madeleine, walked with her
cane to a neighbor’s empty house and died of exposure after a rainy
night under a tarp.
Cell service is spotty in the rural area and calls made by the couple to 911, their son, and a neighbor did not go through.
Hunters found the husband’s body the next day and searchers soon afterward found the wife’s body, according to police.
Arthur was a Juilliard-educated music teacher who had heart disease and a hernia. Madeleine was a retired professor who survived the Nazi occupation in France and had two knee replacements, the Daily News reported.
“What really has me choked up the most is the circumstances they died in,’’ Fields said. “Given the lives they lived, they should have had a better way out than that.’’
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Update: Man who plunged over Niagara Falls stable after rescue
That sure is an extremely alternative form of travel.
