A 16-year-old boy on an e-bike was killed Monday after colliding with a truck on a notoriously deadly thoroughfare in Brooklyn.
Police say 16-year-old Juraed Umedjon, of Ocean Parkway, was driving an e-bike southbound on Coney Island Avenue when a box truck started turning south onto Coney Island from Ditmas Avenue in Kensington at 1:54 p.m. Monday. Police say Umedjon, who had two other male teenage passengers, attempted to pass the truck but lost control and struck a traffic cone, collapsing to the roadway and ending up underneath the rear passenger tires of the truck.
EMS transported Umedjon to Maimonides Hospital in Borough Park, but he could not be saved. A 15-year-old passenger was also taken to Maimonides in stable condition, while another 16-year-old passenger was treated on the scene for minor injuries.
The truck driver remained on the scene, and police do not suspect criminality.
Traffic collisions have killed 158 people across the five boroughs in 2024 through Aug. 18, according to the NYPD. Deaths are up 10% in Brooklyn this year.
Umedjon was the 12th child and 15th cyclist to die in a traffic collision this year, according to the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.
Coney Island Avenue has a reputation as a particularly deadly thoroughfare in Brooklyn. Since 2011, the road — which stretches from Prospect Park to Coney Island — has been the site of 15 deaths, including 10 pedestrians, 3 cyclists, and 2 motorists. Nearly 2,800 people have been injured in crashes along the corridor in the same time period.
In 2019, Coney Island Avenue was the site of one of New York’s most horrific crashes in recent memory, when a teen driver blew a red light at high speed and T-boned a passing car, smashing both vehicles into nearby cyclist Jose Alzorriz and killing him.
“This intersection could be redesigned and rebuilt tomorrow with new daylighting, physical turn calming, and protected bike lanes,” said Elizabeth Adams, co-executive director at Transportation Alternatives, in a statement. “Yet even with crash, after crash, after crash, on the same dangerous streets and in the same dangerous intersections, progress moves far too slow. Our leaders cannot pretend to care about the children of our city and still do nothing when they’re killed over and over again.”
