Woman, 28, killed by charter bus outside courts
BY GABE HERMAN
A woman was fatally struck by a
charter bus on Thursday evening
at Centre and Leonard
Sts. in Lower Manhattan, according to
police.
Kimberly Greer, 28, was crossing
the street in the crosswalk at 7:30 p.m.
when the bus struck her near a courthouse.
She was a law clerk for U.S.
Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker.
Greer was found unconscious at the
scene and pronounced dead later at
New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan
Hospital.
The bus’s driver, Xi Chen, 50, who
police said lives on the Lower East
Side, has been charged with failure to
yield to a pedestrian and failure to use
due care. The Tennessee-bound bus
was operated by Wanda Coach, according
to the Daily News, and Chen
was rushing after leaving the stop at
Allen St. late.
Police said the 2013 bus was making
a left turn from Centre St. onto Leonard
St. as Greer was crossing the street
from south to north and she was hit by
the rear part of the bus and fell to the
ground. The investigation is ongoing.
In a statement released Friday, Judge
Parker called Greer “one of the most
kind and generous persons I know.
Quick to lend a hand to colleagues,
bake cookies for interns and mentor
students. She was a deeply valued and
loved member of my chamber’s family
and we are devastated by this tragedy.”
Greer graduated in 2012 from Northwestern
University where she was on
the dean’s list. She went on to graduate
from Fordham Law School cum laude,
and started as a clerk in March 2018.
She was also an adjunct law professor
at Fordham.
“She distinguished herself in chambers
through her keen analytical skills
and fl uent writing,” said Parker, who
added that Greer was a “vibrant young
woman with an excellent legal mind.”
Greer was a New York native who
lived on Melville, Long Island. She had
just married on Nov. 11, according to
the Daily News.
“We extend our deepest condolences
to Kimberly’s husband Michael Singer,
her father George, her brothers Matt
and Jon, and the rest of her family,”
Parker wrote on Friday.
Pedestrian fatalities in the city have
generally dropped in recent years,
from 184 in 2013 to 101 in 2017, with
a slight uptick in 2016 with 148 pedestrian
deaths, according to the Mayor’s
Offi ce. In July, Mayor Bill de Blasio
announced that overall traffi c deaths
in the fi rst half of 2018 were the lowest
ever recorded in a six-month span,
though pedestrian deaths had stayed
even at 47 from the previous period.
“No loss of life on our streets is acceptable,”
Kimberly Greer in a photo for the Fordham Student Bar Association.
the mayor said in that an- nouncement. “Under Vision Zero, we have made enormous strides toward
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
A charter bus preparing to make a
turn at Leonard and Centre Sts. last
week, at the spot where Kimberly
Greer was fatally struck by another
bus’s rear wheels days earlier.
safer streets for all, with traffi c fatalities
declining for the past four-and-ahalf
years. But we will never rest on our
laurels, and will keep fi ghting for the
safety of our fellow New Yorkers.”
Lower Manhattan was found to have
three times the city average of fatalities
and injuries among pedestrians and cyclists
from Jan. 1, 2013 to Jan. 1, 2018,
according to data compiled by the Web
site Localize.city, which examines public
city data by neighborhood. In the
Lower East Side, Little Italy and Soho,
there were 826 pedestrians injured during
that span, along with 515 injured
cyclists, and 10 people killed.
“We know how to prevent death
and serious injury on our streets,” Paul
Steely White, executive director of
Transportation Alternatives, told Localize.
city when it released that analysis.
“With this study, we also have a
better understanding of where the city
should target investments in safer street
redesigns.”
And according to NYCrosswalk,
a site that compiles pedestrian safety
data at specifi c streets, Lower Manhattan
has some of the most dangerous
intersections, with two being tied
for second-most dangerous in the city:
Pike St. at East Broadway, and Centre
St. at Canal St., each with four collisions
in the last year to date.
Schneps Media TVG December 27, 2018 3