More Info On The Driver Who Ran Down Martha Atwater

By on March 25, 2013 8:23 pm in News

The New York Post reports today on “Drivers who hit people on sidewalks not being prosecuted” including the motorist who struck and killed a Brooklyn Heights resident last month. Reckless NYC drivers have killed three people and seriously injured two in just the last 30 days the paper says.

NY Post: In another case, driver John McKinney, an ex-con with a history of drug arrests, walked free after hitting Emmy-winning TV producer Martha Atwater. She was killed Feb. 22 coming out of a Brooklyn bakery.

The absence of criminal charges against any one of those drivers illustrates the need for New York to reform its vehicular-crime laws, according to Steve Vaccaro, a lawyer who specializes in representing pedestrians hit by motor vehicles.

Under the law, when drivers haven’t been drinking, prosecutors must first find “recklessness” when applying the most serious criminal charges.

Photo: Marc Hermann/BHB

h/t Gothamist

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  • martinlbrooklyn

    Good for the NYPost.

    There was something fishy about this incident from the very begining when the NYPD said no criminality was involved. And, immediately began talking up a diabetic black out. Now the case turns out to be a little more complicated, esp since the driver has a [police record. And the investigation is waiting on his ‘complete’ medical records. Time passes and still there are no words from the NYPD about the depth and transparency of the investigation which might reassure us that a fair and complete investigation is underway. We all are entitled to more information.

  • David Austin

    Those darn police – always going out of their way to help ex-cons with a history of drug arrests evade legal trouble.

  • Wiley E.

    Could the driver be a police informant? They always get bailed out of trouble.

  • Hicks St Guy

    it’s not just pedestrians, bicyclists get run over all the time, while the NYPD, for whatever reason, just observe.

  • StephClkStMom

    Please stop with all this anti police talk on these blogs. Police protect us everyday. Agreed, there are some bad seeds in every job. People are so ungrateful and undeserving of the NYPD. How about next time your house gets robbed or your ipad gets stolen the police dont respond to your stupid call. The residents in this neighborhood are so unaware of the dangers police face everyday. All you people are concerned about is earning your next paycheck in your cushy office job to pay for your brownstone. Try doing a policeman’s job for a day and see if you last. Ya’ll need a reality check.

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlsiLOnWCoI Arch Stanton

    In general, the police do very little to “protect us” as individuals. Their primary mission is to write tickets. After that it’s to file reports on crimes after they have been committed. Sometime the’ll be lucky to catch a perpetrator in the act or soon after but only the serious matters actually get investigated. Other than that is mostly boring driving around and eating bad food. That was how it was explained to me by my Uncle, who was a NYPD officer for 30 years.
    I’ll add, the seeming “inefficiency” is mostly not the fault of the individual officers but the way of the system and the reality of the situation.