Freelander, 28, was struck and killed at Bushwick Avenue and Boerum Street. (Google Maps)
July 2, 2019 By Laura Hanrahan
A 28-year-old woman was struck and killed yesterday by a cement truck while riding her bike in East Williamsburg, marking the 15th cycling death in the city this year alone—a significant increase from the total 10 fatalities in all of 2018.
The woman, later identified as Bushwick resident Devra Freelander, had been riding her bike northbound on Bushwick Avenue just after 12 p.m. when she was fatally hit by a 2017 Mack cement truck that was heading east on Boerum Street.
The deadly collision happened just six blocks north of Freelander’s Garden Street apartment.
The driver of the truck, a 70-year-old man, remained on the scene while EMS arrived. Responders found Freelander with severe trauma to her head and body. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
No arrests have been made and an investigation is ongoing by the NYPD Collision Investigation Squad, according to police.
Devra Freelander (Facebook)
Freelander’s death marks the second cyclist killed in Brooklyn since Thursday when Ernest Askew, 54, was killed by a teenage driver while riding his bike near Sutter Avenue at Chester Street in Brownsville.
Mayor Bill de Blasio declared the high number of cyclist deaths an “emergency” while speaking on NY1’s “Inside City Hall” and has directed the Department of Transportation to develop a new “cyclist safety plan.”
“We absolutely have an emergency on our hands,” de Blasio said. “We’ve been using the Vision Zero strategy now for over five years, it’s been working consistently, but what we’ve seen these last weeks and months is not acceptable. We’re going to do a full court press to stop it.”
Featured Events
18 Comments
Is that pic after she was hit by the truck?
Peoples, read the latest July 15, 2019 “Police arrest Williamsburg teen in burglary, thousands of dollars in stolen cash and goods” and to flee the scene this genius used a Citi Bike.
LOL.!!!
There ya go we need license plates on bikes and since nobody uses a bus to pull up on a burglary –let’s rip out those bike lanes and put in BUS lanes and parking for cars.
Someone died. Maybe copy and paste your generic rant on a different article?
Yeah seriously have some respect for the hipster. Not her fault she wasn’t paying attention to the light and riding on the sidewalk.
We get it, boomers are afraid of bikes
Well put and right on! There are not hoards of people riding their bikes to work or carting home a week’s worth of groceries either. It is a well formed and very loud vocal group forcing the rest of us (pedestrians) to pay for their bike lanes who are ignorant of the need for reliable bus, subway service, subway elevators & escalators. The wasted money spent on the under used bike lanes would have been better spent on opening 24-hour subway booths which promote safety, more transit police and power wash the filthy subway platforms, floors and walls already.
I’m going to blow your mind…on my street there’s a bus lane AND a bike lane! Oops, your false dichotomy was instantly destroyed.
>under used bike lanes
Where are these?! My lanes are always crowded, and the commenters here are always complaining that the lanes are so busy they’re dangerous. Hmm.
> very loud vocal group forcing the rest of us (pedestrians) to pay for their bike lanes
“I don’t have a car. Why should I pay for car lanes?” — Imagine having such a terrible understanding of the most basic city planning.
Dear Writer of : “I’m going to blow your mind”: Yes, you should “Why should I pay for car lanes? I don’t have a car.” And Yes you certainly do have a “a terrible understanding of basic city planning” relief that you realize that about yourself. First of all it is call a “Road” not a ‘car lane’. Not having a car you still benefit in many ways from a Road. It was a Road that allowed your amazon delivery, mail delivery, ambulances, fire trucks, police, buses, the bike lane is on a “Road” and Uber that took you home used a “Road” … Do you get it, need I go on?
Cyclists probably should pay attention to the street lights unlike Devra here.
What is missing is the Fact that this biker was attempting to cross the street when she had a RED light. She also did not stop at the corner get off her bike to walk it cross the street. She did not pause sufficiently at the corner for road clearance & safety. A cement truck is HUGE, why didn’t she see it in the road? Bikers must take responsibility for themselves, must operate their bikes defensively. The story bias is that vehicles hit bikers and it is automatically the fault of the vehicle driver with a distorted underlying ‘anti-vehicle’ message . Why no Big Press about the Elderly Lady whose arm was broken by a biker who ran her over and fled the scene? Bikers should have no-fault insurance, license plates, be required to pass a road & written test, be subject to losing their ‘bike license’ when they violate the rules of the road. Bikers do injure pedestrians, it’s just not being written about because it’s an unpopular topic with the media and the pro-bike forces, who when old age and arthritis sets in will no longer be bike riding and then will lobby for closing the bike lanes trading them in for parking so their children easily visit and take them to the doctor. Let the discussion begin: make bike lanes bus lanes.
Someone is dead and you think that’s a good time to regurgitate the “I saw a cyclist run a stop sign once” whine? You can just copy and paste in on the bike lane articles.
Mr. /Ms. Whine for Respect the topic is about bikes and how to operate them safely. When the media puts out a story unbiased impartial ACTS must be reported. The issue is not about a “stop sign” nowhere in the article or the comments is it said the biker or vehicle ran a stop sign. So you only care about the biker, no empathy for the driver of the vehicle? A pigeon died last week, what are you doing about this, are you holding a funeral for it?
Look at how completely unintelligible the rant became:
> will lobby for closing the bike lanes trading them in for parking so their children easily visit and take them to the doctor
…it’s an article about a tragic death but we got to, taking children to the doctor or something?!
Respect, is what you asked for, this isn’t about respect. The poster was making their point about the need for safety and facts of the situation. Invoking ‘respect for the deceased’ is a ploy to shift the topic and create upheaval and to distort the issue that it should not be immediately assumed the vehicle is at fault here, the actions of the biker must be looked at too.
There was no rant in that person’s response and there was no whine and there was no lack of respect, there was no “unintelligible rant”. There is your unwillingness to comprehend, digest and understand what commenters write. There is your grand effort to hyper-infuse emotionally triggered wording to sway readers away from Facts, an attempt to prevent a discussion to resolve or find alternate resolutions. Your words are meant to agitate the discussion and it didn’t work. The relief of not having to work with you, you must be a nightmare at meetings and your suffering co-workers, ugh!
Do you have anything to say or just accusations of hyper-infusion?
Did I already miss the funeral?? I was attending a closed casket funeral for a cyclist.
I 1000% agree with your entire post. Especially your comment :”Bikers should have no-fault insurance, license plates, be required to pass a road & written test, be subject to losing their ‘bike license’ when they violate the rules of the road.” I’m 63 and am in no shape to be riding a bike in an empty park; let alone on city streets. I need to drive in the neighborhood to do errands and such. It is almost daily that I witness bikers coming down the wrong way of a one way street and sometimes wobbling like a 7 year old learning to ride the first time. Or multiple times daily the running of red lights etc. If, while I’m stopped at a stop sign and inching slowly forward to check for cars or bikes coming down the one way street before I proceed, and a biker slams into me because he or she is coming up the street the wrong way, the immediate result is the questioning of me as to whether I was breaking any law they could possibly find. Recently I was walking across the street at such an intersection and from a standstill slowly stepped out to check for oncoming traffic coming down the street, and in an instant a biker brushed by me coming up the wrong way. He was literally a couple inches from slamming into me. I was so surprised all I could muster was a loud HEY!!! He never turned around to so much as look. And as I remember it, he did see me but almost had a look of “if I hit you its gonna be your fault!” And it will be MY insurance that takes the hit as well. It is a circus. But look at the likes and dislikes of your post. The dislikes outnumber the likes by about 2-1. This is NYC today. Reality is what most people here want it to be, not what it really is. And truth??? If they feel an emotion then that has to be the truth. What they don’t realize is bonafide Truth ALWAYS proves itself in the end. It may take years but it will happen. May the Lord help us all.