Paul Bass Photo
The crash scene.
(Updated) For the second time in nine years, a car crash has killed a pedestrian at the intersection of York Street and South Frontage Road.
The latest fatal crash took place around 3 p.m. Tuesday. Police said a driver struck a 42-year-old pedestrian, Melissa Tancredi of Waterbury, at the intersection, and she died.
Tancredi was on the sidewalk, not in the street, when the driver of the car hopped the curb and struck her, according to police. Passers-by, including medical staff from Yale-New Haven Hospital a half-block away, tried unsuccessfully to hep her at the scene and keep her alive.
The driver was a 29-year-old woman from Hamden.
“Tancredi was standing fully on the sidewalk (northeast corner) at South Frontage Road and York Street when she was struck. [The driver] was operating her car in the left-most lane of South Frontage Road. Her lane is a left-turn only lane that does not continue (ahead) beyond the intersection. Despite traveling in the left turn only lane, [the driver] continued straight. He car jumped the curbstone, continued a few feet, struck the pedestrian and then a lamp post and the corner of the Air Rights Garage,” police spokesman Officer David Hartman reported in a press release.
The department’s crash investigation unit came on scene to investigate the incident. The driver stayed on scene and cooperated. She was subsequently taken over to the hospital, where she was ] “treated and released.” Any decisions about whether to press charges against her will depend on the outcome of the crash unit’s investigation.
A New Haven “traffic-calming” and pedestrian education movement started after an earlier fatal crash at the same intersection: fourth-year Yale medical student Mila Rainoff died while crossing that intersection in 2008. After her death, a “Yale Medical Traffic Safety Group” formed to make the intersection safer and to advise pedestrians about crossing more carefully. Rainoff’s death — combined with the death of 11-year-old Gabrielle Lee as she crossed Whallely Avenue — sparked a citywide “Street Smarts” campaign that led to new laws and roadway construction aimed at slowing cars.