A 40-year-old Yale professor crossing the street to pick up her daughter from child care was struck by a car Tuesday evening — while she was in the crosswalk.
The crash occurred around 5:15 p.m. on Orange Street by Wall Street.
It was the latest in a string of pedestrian crashes this year, four of which have already ended in death.
The Yale professor, who lives on campus with her family, was crossing the southern perimeter of the intersection when a woman apparently making a left turn from Wall onto Orange hit her.
The driver stayed on scene.
Firefighters provided assistance to the victim on scene, according to Assistant Fire Chief Mark Vendetto. The woman was then transported by ambulance to Yale New Haven Hospital.
State Rep. Roland Lemar happened to arrive on the scene minutes later, to pick up his own child from the same center, Creating Kids Childcare.
He was startled to see the fellow parent on the ground.
“She was definitely in the crosswalk when she was hit,” Lemar said later. He also saw the driver remaining in her car, in the crosswalk, as the firefighters and cops arrived, Lemar said.
Lemar rushed into the preschool to alert teachers to what had happened.
The victim complained of hip and head pain, according to police spokesman Capt. Anthony Duff. The injuries were non-life-threatening; she was later released from the hospital with a fractured skull and broken hip (update).
Police charged the driver, who cooperated with police at the scene, with operating a vehicle with a suspended license and failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, according to Capt. Duff.
Later, after he picked up his daughter, Lemar said, he grew angry. Angry, and frustrated.
As a state representative, and before that as a city alder, he has championed traffic-safety efforts like a statewide “vulnerable users” law.
“I’ve spent 13 years working on this stuff — and it’s getting worse. It’s happening more and more frequently,” Lemar said.
New Haven police are stepping up enforcement of motor vehicle laws in an attempt to curb dangerous driving.
This week they obtained an arrest warrant in another case involving a crosswalk: when a driver struck the walker of a woman inside a Whalley Avenue crosswalk, knocking her to the ground and sending her to the hospital.
Drivers have already killed four pedestrians in New Haven in 2020. (By contrast, the city has seen one murder.) Police have released only limited information about those fatal crashes while they remain under investigation.
On Sunday, a driver hit and killed a 68-year-old pedestrian named Govinda Kandel on Middletown Avenue. On Jan. 14, 50-year-old New Havener Arthur Bastek was struck and killed on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. On Jan. 22, 55-year-old New Havener Kevin Anthony Cunningham was struck and killed on Whalley Avenue. On the night of Feb. 17, Gilberto Molina, a 44-year-old native of Puerto Rico, became the third pedestrian to be struck and killed by a car in New Haven already this year when he was hit on Columbus Avenue near West Street.
And this past weekend police arrested a woman for driving under the influence and hitting a 42-year-old woman who remained Monday in “critical but stable” condition at Yale-New Haven Hospital