Man driving U-Haul truck hits pedestrians in New York, injuring 8

NEW YORK – At least eight people were injured when a man drove a U-Haul box truck erratically through the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn on Monday, careening onto sidewalks and hitting pedestrians, authorities said.

The driver, whom police had not identified by Monday afternoon, was first stopped by officers around 10:50 a.m., after he had already hit some people with the truck, said Keechant L. Sewell, the police commissioner.

He then fled in the truck and drove through Bay Ridge, hitting more people before being arrested on Columbia Street and Hamilton Avenue, near the entrance to the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel.

Seven civilians and one police officer were hospitalized with injuries, authorities said. Two of the people were in critical condition.

Sewell said there was no indication that terrorism was involved.

Justin Brannan, a City Council member who represents the area, said in a phone interview that on Monday morning his office began hearing reports about someone driving through Bay Ridge like a “maniac.”

“We started getting calls about someone in a U-Haul driving violently through the neighborhood,” he said.

In an interview with NY1, he added: “This driver knew what he was doing, knew that he was hitting people.”

Bay Ridge, nestled in the southwest portion of Brooklyn, is bound by Sunset Park to the north and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge to the south. The intersection between Bay Ridge Parkway – a thoroughfare known as Doctors’ Row – and Fifth Avenue is busy, with a bike lane and bus routes, and dotted with many banks and businesses.

Staff members at a Coldwell Banker real estate office on that corner said that they had heard a commotion that sounded like a truck dragging something, perhaps a muffler. But when they ran out of the building, they saw a man who appeared to be in his 30s lying in the eastbound lanes of the parkway.

Amanda Perez, 39, an employee of the real estate agency, called 911 and a volunteer ambulance service several times but couldn’t get through.

“I was shocked,” she said. “It was a horror to see him in that condition and think someone can flee the scene. It’s devastating.”

Lilia Gomez, 34, said she was in a McDonald’s drinking coffee on 72nd Street with a friend when they saw the truck barreling down the street. They rushed outside and saw a man trapped underneath his motorcycle, conscious but unable to move.

Parts of the bike were strewn all over the street.

Emergency workers helped free the man and placed him in an ambulance, said Gomez, who described Bay Ridge as a quiet neighborhood of immigrants, many of them Arab.

“It’s a very peaceful place,” Gomez said. “I think I’m going to get my kids from school, because I am a little scared by what happened. You don’t see this in Bay Ridge.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.