NEW YORK – A 29-year-old pregnant woman was killed and a second woman was seriously injured Friday when a commercial van jumped the curb of a midtown Manhattan sidewalk at rush hour and crashed into a building wall. An hour earlier on the Upper West Side, seven people were injured when a taxi hurtled into a pizzeria, shattering its windows.
Ysemny Ramos was killed when the van struck her at about 5 p.m., just a few blocks from the Empire State Building, police said. Witnesses told reporters that the second victim, a 37-year-old woman who was taken to the hospital in serious condition, told them that Ramos was pregnant.
Police arrested the 27-year-old van driver, who was uninjured. They did not identify him, and charges against him were pending.
The earlier crash uptown left one person in critical condition, and two others in stable condition, city fire officials said. There were no arrests in the taxi crash.
Frances Rivera was at the pizzeria counter with her daughters at around 4 p.m. when the plate glass windows exploded. "My kids flew from the impact," she said.
Her 8-year-old, Tianna, was among four people with minor injuries, cut by flying glass when the yellow SUV hit Mama's Pizzeria on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her 4-year-old was unharmed.
Deborah Sapia, Tianna's grandmother, said she rushed to the scene of the accident on West 106th Street after receiving a panicked call from her daughter-in-law, who was screaming that the girl was bleeding.
There she saw the corner pizza place thrown into chaos, shards of glass on the ground and three people prone on the sidewalk as emergency workers performed triage.
A few hours later, inspectors from the Buildings Department were at the pizzeria, examining the building's damage after the crash. The pizzeria's benches could be seen in disarray inside the shop. The cab's front grille was seen lying against the building's outside wall.
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