A Bronx family is grieving after a 93-year-old great-grandmother was struck and killed by a motorcyclist in the Wakefield section of the borough, in a crash that police are now investigating as a search continues for the rider who sped away. The victim has been identified as Lenora Campbell.
Detectives say the crash happened around 2:30 on Monday afternoon at White Plains Road and East 225th Street, one of the busier corridors in the northern Bronx. Witnesses were left shaken after seeing the elderly woman lying motionless in the street in the immediate aftermath.
According to police, the motorcyclist struck Campbell and, in a detail captured on video that News 12 said was too heartbreaking to show, hit her twice before dragging her down the street as he sped away from the scene. The account has framed the case as a hit-and-run, with the rider fleeing rather than stopping to help.
Emergency crews responded to the scene, but the injuries proved fatal. The loss of a 93-year-old matriarch has hit her family hard, and they said they would remember Lenora Campbell's life through a vigil planned for Monday night near where she was killed.
The NYPD's collision investigation squad worked the scene, using a drone and other cameras to gather evidence and reconstruct exactly how the crash unfolded. Investigators were focused on identifying and finding the man who fled on the motorcycle after the collision.
The death came even as the city reported progress on traffic safety. According to the latest Vision Zero figures, 46 New Yorkers have been killed while crossing the street so far this year, a total that is down more than 42 percent compared with when the program launched in 2013, putting the city on track for one of its safest years on record.
City transportation officials said they were continuing to expand safer street designs and step up traffic enforcement in an effort to prevent more families from suffering this kind of loss. For Campbell's relatives, however, those numbers offered little comfort as they mourned a great-grandmother killed on a street that many of them cross every day, and as police continued to look for the motorcyclist who left her in the road.