No Charges for Cabbie Who Chased Cyclist, Severed Woman’s Leg
There will be no criminal charges for the cab driver who, in attempting to go after a cyclist in a fit of rage, lurched forward with his cab and hit a British tourist, severing her leg.
And what’s more, the jerk is back on the street, where he can endanger all of us.
The crash which occurred in Midtown this past August highlighted the tragic consequences of the often tense relations that cyclists endure with cabbies and other drivers who push them around with their one-ton vehicles.
Adding insult to injury, Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, issued a statement calling the crash a “tragic accident” and suggested that the appropriate response would be stricter regulation of cyclists.
After an investigation of two months, the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said it had decided that the driver, Faysal Himon, would not be charged with a crime.
Mr. Himon’s license was suspended for 30 days after the crash, on Aug. 20, for prior violations, but he has been cleared to drive since late September, said the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, according to the NY Times.
In other words folks, the killer is back on the streets. The least penalty this reactionary driver should have faced would have been to his license suspended for having the maturity of a five-year-old. But no, in America, it’s okay to nearly take the life of two people and keep driving.
Daniel G. P. Marchese, a lawyer representing the family of the injured woman, Sian Green, said that the family was “shocked and disappointed” by the decision. But that will not preclude the Greens from suing the driver, his cab company or the taxi commission, among others, said Marchese.
To charge Mr. Himon, prosecutors would have had to show that he intended to crash into Mr. Olivo, Mr. Marchese said. But they told Mr. Marchese that they did not feel they had sufficient evidence of such malice, he said.
Joan Vollero, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, said the investigation had been thorough.
“In making this determination, prosecutors who are specially trained in vehicular crimes reviewed all available evidence and took into consideration relevant sections of the state’s vehicle and traffic laws,” Ms. Vollero said in a statement. That evidence included surveillance videos from the scene, tapes of calls to 911 and data from the cab’s “black box.”
“This decision has frightening implications,” Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives told the NY Times. “Drivers have the most responsibility, because people behind the wheel of one-ton vehicles have the greatest capacity to do harm to others. The law should acknowledge that fact.”
