NEW YORK CITY — A 44-year-old photographer was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Morningside Heights on New Year's Eve, according to police.
Guler Ugur-Yaacobi, a resident of Kensington in Brooklyn, was crossing Amsterdam Avenue near West 113th Street at about 6 p.m. when she was struck by a black SUV heading north, police said.
Emergency workers rushed Ugur-Yaacobi to St. Luke’s Hospital where she was pronounced dead.
The vehicle did not remain at the scene. No further description was available.
Ugur-Yaacobi was a professional photographer with a business on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, according to her Facebook page.
A neighbor at her Kensington apartment building said she remembers her as friendly and said she often spoke about trips to her home country, Turkey.
Friends posted messages about her passing online Thursday.
"Guler lived life every day to the fullest with energy and happiness," one wrote on her photography business' page.
"I'm going to miss her deeply," another wrote on a photo of Ugur-Yaacobi from the summer.
At the scene of the accident, a doorman who works in a building near Amsterdam Avenue, Ivan Moore, said cars often speed along the roadway.
“You can just speed up here,” said Moore. “If the lights are in sync you can just fly up it [Amsterdam Avenue].”
In August, a man was critically injured two blocks away on Amsterdam Avenue and West 115th when he was stuck by a car.
