Woman killed by truck at dangerous Chelsea intersection

The grisly scene at the corner of Ninth Ave. and 16th St., where 82-year-old Amelia Chimienti was struck and killed by a large truck on Monday morning.

By Lawrence Lerner

An elderly woman was crushed to death Monday morning after being hit by a large flat-bed truck at what has long been considered by community activists as one of Chelsea’s most dangerous corners.

Amelia Chimienti, 82, of 335 West 14th St., was killed instantly just after 11 a.m., as she made her way south across 16th St. on the east side of Ninth Ave., police said. Chimienti was pronounced dead at the scene, which was just across the street from Chelsea Market.

The driver, who police refused to identify, has not been arrested or charged with a crime because the incident has been ruled an accident, according to officials. He was issued two summonses unrelated to the incident, one for non-working equipment on his truck and another for not having a tax stamp on the windshield.

According to the police and eye-witnesses, Chimienti was hit when the truck, driving north on Ninth Ave., turned right onto 16th St. and struck her. They said the vehicle, from Sunny Lumber & Hardware in Brooklyn, continued on for a short distance before parking halfway down the block.

Ehsan Powanda, a native of Afghanistan who serves the nearby lunch crowd from his food cart on 16th St. near Eighth Ave., saw the accident while talking with a friend just inside the glass doorway of the Maritime Hotel, some 50 yards from the scene.

“I never saw this in my country. It was very bad,” he said, adding that the northbound light on Ninth Ave. was yellow when the truck turned right and struck what he called an elderly woman. “I think he was trying to make the light. And he hit her. She was dead. And then his back tires ran over her. It was terrible.”

Traffic coming east on 16th St. followed, Ehsan said, and a cab behind the truck also ran over the woman’s remains before the next car stopped and halted traffic.

According to another eye-witness, a delivery driver who saw the accident in the sideview mirror of his truck, which was parked a third of the way down 16th St. facing east, the truck driver may not have known he hit the woman.

“As far as I know, he had no knowledge, because he just drove slowly down the block, got out and started doing his delivery,” said the man, who went only by Jeff and was delivering goods to 111 Eighth Ave. for American Storage, of Melville, N.Y. “I then told the policeman that that’s the truck that drove over the person, and he went down and talked to him. I said, ‘You’ll see the spot mark on the tire, I guarantee it.’”

Meanwhile, Austin Thurber, a sales rep at Hilti, a construction tools company located on the southeast corner of Ninth Ave. and 16th St., did not witness the accident but heard passersby screaming immediately after the woman was hit.

“I went out before the police got there, but my weak stomach limited me. I had to come back in,” he said.

Like many people living and working in the Meatpacking District, Thurber is wary of the intersection where the accident occurred. “You’ve got this one lone northbound lane, between 14th to 16th Sts., coming head-on with four southbound lanes right where the woman got hit,” he said. “She probably perceived that all the traffic was going south. It’s easy to do. You barely notice cars coming north there, ready to turn right onto 16th St.”

Community activists have long pegged the intersection as dangerous. Three weeks ago, the area’s newest community group, the Greater Gansevoort Urban Improvement Project, held a public brainstorming session to help reshape the neighborhood.

Not surprisingly, Ninth Ave. and 16th St. ranked high on the list of problems to fix.

“There are many issues with that intersection, and our group and Community Board 4 are in the process of re-examining traffic patterns there, as is the Department of Transportation,” said Joshua David, co-founder of Friends of the High Line and a member of G.G.U.I.P.’s steering committee.

“The northbound lane on Ninth Ave. seems to be left over from when the Port Authority building loading docks were still in use. The pavement markings for the southbound left-hand turn leads drivers to believe it’s a highway turn, not a New York City intersection, and many of them take it going much too fast, making it very unsafe for pedestrians,” David added. “And the hand-signal on 16th St. changes too quickly, instead of being pegged to Ninth Ave. traffic flow. I myself have had many near misses at that intersection and have heard of many accidents there.”

At G.G.U.I.P.’s public meeting last month, planning consultant Sam Schwartz, former commissioner of the city’s Department of Transportation, whose urban-planning firm is consulting with G.G.U.I.P. on retooling the Meatpacking District, said that Transportation is planning on making this stretch of Ninth Ave. southbound.

“This will create great opportunities for improvement in the immediate vicinity,” he said, “including much-needed improvements to pedestrian safety, which has been a running theme all night.”

Jo Hamilton, chair of G.G.U.I.P.’s steering committee, added her condolences to Chimienti, her family and friends yesterday.

“This killing was a real tragedy. My heart goes out to her,” she said. “This accident, I’m afraid, only underscores what we’re trying to do with our project, to prevent these kinds of things by looking at what to do differently with the streets in the Meatpacking District.”