A taxi driver was arrested after he fatally struck an 88-year-old great-grandmother on the Upper West Side on Sunday, capping a bloody weekend on the city’s streets.
Cabbie Salifu Abubkar was driving south on Columbus Avenue and turned right onto West 109th Street around 12:40 a.m. when he mowed down Luisa Rosario about a block from her home, cops said.
Rosario was inside the crosswalk and had the walk signal when she was struck, cops said. Abubkar, 73, was arrested around 4:25 a.m. and charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian.
Rosario’s family and friends were beside themselves with grief.
“Though she was 88 years old, she didn’t consider herself to be an old woman,” her daughter-in-law, Sergia Gutierrez De Tejada, said as she smiled through tears. “She said her body was almost 90 but her mind was like a child. She didn’t like to look in mirrors because it reminded her that she was an old woman.”
She said Rosario had four sons, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
“We are all in shock this morning,” she said. ”It is like a bad dream we’re trying to wake up from.”
Elizabeth Herrera, 46, a neighbor and lifelong friend, said cars drove too fast in the area.
“It is very dangerous around here, especially the yellow cabs,” she said. “They just fly around corners. One hit my grandmother four years ago on Amsterdam and 106. Now Luisa. This is insane!”
The Taxi and Limousine Commission suspended Abubkar’s license in the
wake of the fatality, said agency spokesman Allan Fromberg.
Rosario was one of two pedestrian fatalities over the weekend and among at least six people struck by vehicles Saturday and Sunday.
A 68-year-old man was struck and killed in Queens around 9:30 p.m. Saturday as he crossed in the crosswalk against the traffic signal. The man, whose identity was pending family notification, was taken to Jamaica Hospital but couldn’t be saved. The driver remained at the scene and wasn’t charged.
Earlier, a fire truck with its sirens blaring as it rushed to the scene of a reported gas leak crashed into a man at 15th Street and Irving Place in Manhattan around 8 p.m., cops said. The victim was transported to Bellevue Hospital with a serious leg injury, officials said.
Two people were injured when they were hit by a van as they crossed Nostrand Avenue against the traffic signal around 6:20 p.m., police said.
A 65-year-old suffered severe head injuries and a 2
9-year-old suffered minor injuries when they were hit by a 77-year-old man driving a 2009 Ford Econoline, cops said.
Around noon, a bicyclist riding alongside a silver Lexus on 99th Avenue in Hollis, Queens, was struck when the car lost control at 205th Street, cops said. The 63-year-old, whose identity wasn’t revealed, was thrown off the bike and struck by the car’s windshield about a block from his home, cops said. He was taken to Jamaica Hospital with severe head injuries.