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Taxi Driver Who Fatally Hit UWS Boy, 9, Failed to Yield, Police Say

By  Jess Wisloski and Rosa Goldensohn | January 11, 2014 9:32am | Updated on January 11, 2014 1:02pm

 Cooper Stock was hit while crossing West End Avenue with his father Friday night.
Nine-year-old boy struck by car and killed
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UPPER WEST SIDE —  A 9-year-old boy was struck by a taxi and killed Friday as he and his dad walked across the street near their Upper West Side home.

Cooper Stock, a third-grader at The Calhoun School, and his dad, Dr. Richard Stock, were in the middle of the crosswalk when they were hit by a cab making a left-hand turn onto West End Avenue at West 97th Street, about 9 p.m., police said.

Stock screamed in horror while witnesses ran at the cab, yelling, to keep the driver, Koffi Komlani, 53, from leaving the scene, the Daily News reported.

"The father was standing here," said Manuel Martinez, 50, a neighbor who was walking home soon after the crash and witnessed the aftermath. "He was destroyed. The way he was sobbing. It was devastating. I was heartbroken for them."

Komlani, who had been turning from West 97th onto West End Avenue, appeared to be in shock, the News reported. He remained at the scene. The driver was issued a summons for failing to yield to pedestrian immediately, police said. 

The family released a statement about Cooper late Saturday, saying he loved the Yankees, rock and roll, and the Knicks. "Cooper was the life of the party even when there wasn’t a party," the statement said. "He was light, he was reflective, he was beauty in motion, he was charismatic. He has been described as an old soul, and wise beyond his years."

Stock, a radiation oncologist with a private practice on Fifth Avenue, was attributed with helping former Mayor Rudy Giuliani combat prostate cancer in a 2000 New York Times article. In the piece, he says he sought cancer work in med school to help people the best way he could.

"That was people caught right in the middle of a life crisis, and I felt that's where I wanted to be, where you could make a big difference," he told the Times.

An investigation by the NYPD's Highway Patrol investigation squad is ongoing, a spokesman said.

It was the second turning-related traffic death in under an hour for the neighborhood, after a 73-year-old man was killed by a tour bus as it turned left onto Broadway around 8:30 p.m.