NYC nurse killed in hit-and-run on Brooklyn's Third Avenue after overnight shift
Jiayi Zheng, 28, was struck by a speeding Cadillac that ran a red light in Sunset Park Saturday morning. The driver fled and remains at large.
Nurse struck dead in Sunset Park while walking home in scrubs
A 28-year-old nurse was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood Saturday morning after finishing an overnight shift at a nearby hospital, NY Post Metro reports.
Jiayi Zheng, still in her forest green scrubs, was crossing at 55th Street and Third Avenue around 7:30 a.m. when the driver of a black Cadillac sedan ran a red light and struck her at high speed. Surveillance footage captured the collision.
The impact sent Zheng airborne before she landed on the median — just one block from NYU Langone-Brooklyn Hospital, where she worked as a medical-surgical unit nurse. Medics transported her to the same hospital, where she died from head and neck injuries.
The driver, whose vehicle bore Pennsylvania license plates according to police sources, never stopped.
"I heard the bang. Her bag was over here, and they left her there," witness Antonio Perez told News 12 Brooklyn. "The car just kept on, it never stopped for nothing at all."
State Senator Andrew Gounardes, who represents the Sunset Park area, described the stretch of Third Avenue as a persistently dangerous corridor. A Department of Transportation redesign plan for the road was presented in 2023 but never implemented.
"While the investigation proceeds, I am once again calling on @NYC_DOT to work with the community to make 3rd Ave safer," Gounardes wrote on X. "Just over a year ago we lost two elderly neighbors to a similar crash, and 3rd Ave remains one of the most dangerous corridors in Brooklyn. Enough is enough."
The crash occurred one block from where nurse Clara Kang, 31, was killed by a motorcyclist in 2020 while cycling home from the same hospital.
According to advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, Zheng is the eleventh person killed while walking or biking the two-mile stretch of Third Avenue beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway since 2014 — and the ninth person in New York City killed by a hit-and-run driver in the past two weeks.
"New York City streets should be the envy of the world, but we are the envy of no one today," said Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, in a statement.
Colleagues at NYU Langone-Brooklyn remembered Zheng as a "loving nurse and hard worker." A hospital spokesperson issued a statement to The Post: "We are deeply saddened by the passing of Jiayi Zheng, a nurse at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn. Our nurses play an essential role in caring for others with compassion and dedication, and this loss is being felt across our entire community."
As of Sunday afternoon, the driver remained at large.
Source: NY Post Metro