COLLEGE STUDENT KILLED, THREE OTHER SERIOUSLY HURT IN 2006 TAXI
From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Accident Attorney)
In June, 2006, 20 year-old Pace University student Danielle Ricco and three friends were riding in a taxi in Manhattan's Greenwich Village when the taxi jumped a center median and crashed into a building. Ms. Ricco was thrown out of the taxi, struck by a second vehicle and killed. The other three passengers were seriously injured.
Passenger Anna Sallustio suffered serious fractures to her leg and pelvis. Her sister, Enza Sallustio, age 25, was in a coma for two weeks from a serious head and traumatic brain injury.
A third passenger, Amy Judy Vallarelli, age 25, is only now able to walk unassisted after suffering a fractured pelvis and a shattered femur bone.
This sad tale drew to a close on Monday, March 29, 2010, In Manhattan's Supreme Court, when former New York City cabbie Hassan Afzal admitted that he had stopped taking his medication and had a seizure just before his taxi crashed. Afzal won't spend a day in jail - as part of a plea deal with prosecutors he is expected to be sentenced to five years probation on April 16th - even though he repeatedly denied having epilepsy on his license forms.
The guilty plea came on the day that Afzal was supposed to proceed to trial on charges of criminally negligent homicide. He had been expected to argue that the accident was the result of brake failure. Prosecutors accepted the deal because they felt that it would have been difficult to prove that Mr. Afzal had a seizure just before the accident.
Afzal has had his driver's and taxi licenses revoked.
