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For the
young Bronx police officers on their way to help patrol a major demonstration
in Midtown Manhattan, the early morning assignment on Sunday was a reprieve
from the daily danger of a violent precinct.
But as the
police van in which they were riding rounded a notoriously sharp turn on the
Bruckner Expressway just after 5 a.m., the driver lost control and the van
slammed into a barrier, ejecting a 25-year-old rookie officer onto the
rain-slicked roadway.
The
officer, Michael Williams, was pronounced dead less than an hour later at
Lincoln Hospital. Eight other officers who were in the marked police van, a
2009 Ford Econoline, were hurt, though their injuries were not
life-threatening, the police said.
Mayor Bill
de Blasio called the crash a tragedy and said he was “heartsick” at the death
of Officer Williams. “The notion that this was a guy just starting out, who
loved what he was doing as a police officer and had a whole bright future
ahead, and he lost it in this tragic accident,” the mayor said, speaking to
reporters at the climate change protest that some of the officers in the van
had been assigned to patrol.
At Lincoln
Hospital, top police officials appeared shaken. Philip Banks III, the chief of
department, said Officer Williams had joined the department to follow in the
footsteps of his father, a 32-year-veteran of the Carmel, N.Y., police force.
“It’s all he ever wanted to do,” Chief Banks said.
Investigators
were looking into the circumstances of the crash, which did not involve any
other vehicles. Among the issues being examined: how fast the van was going as
it approached the sharp left turn near Bryant Avenue and whether the officers
on board were wearing seatbelts, as required. Investigators were also
performing mechanical tests on the van.
All
officers must wear seatbelts when on duty, a policy that dates back to William
J. Bratton’s initial tenure as police commissioner in the mid-1990s amid a rash
of on-duty driving deaths and injuries. The last fatal on-duty accident
occurred in 2011, killing Detective Fermin Archer. (A traffic enforcement agent
on foot was fatally struck by a car last year.)
That
Officer Williams was thrown from the rear of the van, where he was seated,
suggested he was not wearing a belt, officials said, though that remained under
investigation.
The
officers injured on Sunday were taken to Lincoln Hospital, Jacobi Medical
Center and St. Barnabas Hospital. All had been traveling from the 47th
Precinct, a sprawling section of the north Bronx where gun violence and murder
has spiked this year, to the climate march or other security assignments
connected with the session of the United Nations General Assembly that begins
this week, the police said.
“I didn’t
really expect this to happen today,” said a rookie officer who, like Officer
Williams, was usually assigned to Operation Impact in the 47th Precinct. “It
could have been any one of us in there.” The rookie, who declined to be
identified because he did not have permission to speak to the press, said a
group of young officers from the precinct had visited their colleagues in the
hospital on Sunday morning. He described Officer Williams as a “good kid” who
kept to himself.
Of the nine
officers in the van, Officer Williams was one of six who joined the department
this year. The other three, including the 32-year-old driver who was not
identified by the police, joined the department in July 2012.
url: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/nyregion/fatal-police-crash-in-the-bronx.html?_r=0
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