UPDATE: Hit-And-Run Driver Arrested After Leaving Man In Queens Street To Die
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The hit-and-run driver who left a man lying in the street to die Sunday in Queens has been arrested, according to police.
UPDATE (10 p.m. ET): Authorities say 28-year-old Irving Duran of Queens was taken into custody Monday night and charged with leaving the scene of a vehicle accident resulting in death.
The 29-year-old victim was mowed down moments after leaving dinner with friends.
It happened around 6:30 p.m. near the intersection of Continental Avenue and Exeter Street in the Forest Hills neighborhood.
Melissa Acevedo told CBS2 she and Niklas Ahern, of Tribeca, had just finished having dinner with another friend when a silver, four-door car suddenly crashed into Ahern, the impact sending his body flying and knocking his shoe off his foot.
"I was holding him. I got his blood all over me," she said.
Ahern was taken to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
One man said he could hear the crash from inside his nearby home.
"I heard like a bang bang, and then I opened the door, and I see somebody was laying down on the floor right behind that car here," he said. "There was a girl screaming. She was distressed, completely. It was horrible."
Police said the driver took off heading north in the residential community, where neighbors say it's common for people to speed.
"People do drive very fast here, very fast," the man said.
"They do speed quite a bit," a woman added. "They want to catch the light at the other end."
Don Boe said it was "inevitable" that "eventually something like this would happen."
"My concern is there are so many children on that block that one day, without speed bumps, someone's going to get hurt, and we might be telling this story all over again with a kid," he added.
So last year, the neighbors circulated an online petition, asking the city's Department of Transportation to install speed bumps. They collected more than 1,000 signatures, but the city denied their request, saying the "location does not meet the criteria for a speed bump" and citing "numerous curb cuts on these blocks."
"There's the curb cuts, they call them, which are the driveways. I don't understand the significance," said Boe.
An unmarked police car sat at the scene Monday, clocking drivers for speed. But residents say unless further action is taken, tragedy will likely strike again.