BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — A woman was killed when a tractor-trailer hit and dragged her through an intersection Tuesday morning, officials and witnesses said.
Lakiesha Ramsey, 37, was pushing her laundry cart through the intersection at Lafayette and Patchen avenues about 10:22 a.m. when the turning truck hit her, according to the New York Police Department.
A witness said the woman, who lived several blocks away on Patchen Avenue, was in the middle of the street heading north across Lafayette Avenue when the light turned green.
As the truck bore down on her, she tried to warn the driver.
"She put her hands up," Renee Best, 25, who saw the accident, said. "[She yelled] whoa, whoa, whoa — boom."
She was caught under the truck's back tire, dragging her about ten feet. Her laundry was dragged about a block north to Broadway.
“She was face down bleeding through her ears. [The driver] didn’t stop 'til everybody flagged him down," said Nelson Diaz, 42, who lives nearby.
Ramsey was taken to Woodhull Medical Center where she was pronounced dead, according to the NYPD.
A group of people swarmed around the truck, some tending to the woman and others haranguing the driver.
"There was a big mob trying to get at him," Diaz said.
The 49-year-old driver remained at the scene, police said, and was not initially charged.
Gail McNally, the superintendent of the Patchen Avenue home where neighbors said Ramsey lived with her husband, described her as thoughtful woman with a “gorgeous” smile.
“She was beautiful,” McNally said. “She had a good heart and was always cheery, definitely a family-oriented woman.”
“I cannot believe she’s gone. This is past sad, it’s straight tragic.”
Neighbors called for greater safety measures near the busy thoroughfare where Ramsey was hit, recalling the August death of an 82-year-old woman hit by a dump truck a couple of blocks away on Gates Avenue and Broadway.
“It’s the way they got all those roads that merge there,” a neighbor who identified herself as Dianne said of Tuesday’s incident. “They need to do something about it.”
“She was coming from doing the laundry. That could’ve been me, you, that could’ve been anybody.”
The investigation is ongoing.
