Pizza in Hand, Cold-Blooded New Yorker Strolls Away From Fatal Car Crash
In Brooklyn on Sunday, an unlicensed driver jumped a curb and struck a 30-year-old woman, Victoria Nicodemus, killing her. Surveillance video appears to show a female witness taking bites from a piece of pizza as she walks away from the scene unhurriedly.
The driver had swerved to avoid a bus that stopped abruptly, a witness told the New York Daily News. In the video, obtained by DNAinfo, others run towards the Chevrolet, under the wheels of which Nicodemus, who was later pronounced dead at Brooklyn Hospital, is trapped.
Staff and customers at a pizzeria near the crash scene, Not Ray’s Pizza, said they didn’t recognize the woman in the video.
Some people who saw the aftermath of the deadly crash partially sympathized with the woman seen in the video, even if they didn’t understand her motivation.
“Honestly, I can’t judge her. She has her own reason for walking away in a situation like that,” said Xiomara Morgan, who works at a cafe nearby and saw one of the crash victims crawl through blood to help Nicodemus.
“You see all this commotion and turn around and take a bite? I wouldn’t have even had an appetite,” Morgan added.
Despite an apparent recent uptick in pedestrian deaths, the De Blasio administration has defended its adoption of the Swedish “Vision Zero” traffic plan.
“We have to put the most important thing first, which is saving lives. Not rushing to your next appointment, trying to get through one more light, but actually saving lives,” the mayor said last month.
As of Friday, the Daily News reports, pedestrian deaths were down 4 percent, from 125 last year to 120 this year.
Anyway! Must have been a good slice.
Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.