6-year-old fatally struck in Brooklyn identified; driver faces nine charges
Police say the driver crossed into oncoming traffic and made a left turn into the crosswalk where the girl had the signal in her favor.
A 6-year-old girl struck and killed by a car in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, has been identified as Hiromi Tamy, according to ABC7 New York. She was pronounced dead at Maimonides Hospital after being hit just after 8 p.m. on Tuesday, August 25, 2021, at 12th Avenue near 67th Street.
Police say Tamy was crossing 67th Street in the east crosswalk with the pedestrian signal in her favor when she was struck. The driver, 30-year-old Qiuhua Zhu, was heading south on 12th Avenue in a blue Lexus SUV when he crossed over the solid double yellow pavement markings into oncoming traffic, traveled the wrong way up the one-way street, and made a left turn at the 67th Street intersection, striking her.
Zhu was arrested and charged with nine offenses: manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, vehicular assault, reckless endangerment, motor vehicle failure to yield to a pedestrian with injury, failure to yield to a pedestrian, failure to obey a traffic device, driving the wrong direction on a one-way street, and making an improper left turn on a one-way road, per ABC7's reporting.
What witnesses saw
A vascular access nurse identified as Emery described arriving at the scene and performing CPR on the girl. "I saw mom sitting on the curb holding a little child then blood all over her face, her neck her chest," she said, according to ABC7.
The mechanism behind the charges
The breadth of the charging document reflects that Zhu is accused of multiple, compounding traffic violations rather than a single lapse: crossing a double yellow line, driving against the flow of a one-way street, and making a turn that put him directly into a crosswalk where a pedestrian had the right of way. Prosecutors have not, in the available reporting, detailed why Zhu was traveling in the wrong direction in the first place.
What remains unconfirmed
The source reporting does not indicate whether Zhu had prior driving violations, nor does it specify the disposition of the criminal case beyond the initial charges. Any court schedule or plea was not included in the retrieved coverage.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by ABC7 New York. It restores a story originally published on this site in August 2021; figures are as reported at the time.