85-Year-Old Killed By Box Truck In Sunset Park: Cops

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — An 85-year-old was hit and killed Thursday afternoon in Sunset Park, marking the fifth pedestrian death in Brooklyn in under a month and the second in the neighborhood this week.

Brendan Gill was hit by a box truck near the intersection of 39th Street and Third Avenue around 3:30 p.m., according to police, a corridor local officials have long said is one of the more dangerous in the city. Emergency responders rushed him to the hospital in serious condition, but he was pronounced dead at the hospital, according to FDNY and NYPD officials.

There were no arrests from the crash as of 11 p.m. Thursday and the investigation was ongoing, the NYPD spokesperson said. Gill lived several blocks away from where he was hit on Fourth Avenue.

The crash comes less than 48 hours after a 75-year-old woman was hit an killed in the neighborhood.

That woman, Xue You, was crossing 52nd Street just before 10 a.m. Wednesday when a white Jeep Grand Cherokee trying to make a left turn onto the street from Eighth Avenue hit her, police said.
The 21-year-old driver of the Jeep, Ilda Gjona, stayed at the scene of the crash and was charged with a right-of-way violation and failing to yield to a pedestrian, cops said.

Thursday's crash is also the fifth pedestrian fatality in just a few weeks across the borough.

Just two days before You was killed, 80-year-old Misa Gorlitskaya died in the hospital, three days after she was knocked down by an SUV when trying to cross Voorhies Avenue in Sheepshead Bay.

Officers had found Gorlitskaya lying in the road with injuries on her head and neck around 10:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 13 and rushed her to Bellevue Hospital. She had been hit by a Toyota RAV4 trying to make a left turn onto Voorhies Avenue from Haring Street.

Earlier this month, 40-year-old Tracy Lewis-Belgrave was hit and killed by an SUV as she was crossing the Pearl and Willoughby street intersection, a section of Downtown Brooklyn that had been turned into a "Shared Street" meant to improve safety just months before.

Another woman was killed in late November when she was hit when she was walking near the Pennsylvania and Atlantic avenues intersection in East New York just after 4:30 a.m. She was rushed to Brookdale Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, police said.

Police were still looking for the driver who hit the woman, who drove away, a few days after the crash.