Wednesday, December 21, 2011
News NYPD Criticized for Handling of Investigation in Brooklyn Cyclist's Death
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 8:58 AM
Shortly after midnight on October 19th, 30-year-old Brooklyn-based Canadian artist Mathieu Lefèvre was cycling along Morgan Avenue near the corner of Meserole Street when he was struck and killed by the driver of a turning flatbed truck. The case surrounding the fatal hit-and-run by the NYPD's Accident Investigation Squad has raised eyebrows—the driver's claim that he never saw Lefèvre was taken at face value, despite apparent evidence to the contrary—and now Steve Vaccaro, the attorney for Lefèvre's family, has published a letter (embedded below) accusing the police department of mishandling their investigation and losing crucial evidence.
The four-page letter sent by Vaccaro—whose colleague in a class action lawsuit on behalf of cyclists against the NYPD we interviewed back in June—to Sergeant Matthew Bono of the NYPD’s Highway Patrol Unit number 2 in Flatbush underlines inconsistencies in the AIS's accident report and conflicting accounts of how Lefèvre was struck by driver Leonardo Degianni.
Perhaps most damning, Vaccaro points out that invaluable evidence such as the blood and paint marks on the truck's bumper were allowed to wash away in subsequent rains before being recorded, as was Lefèvre's helmet.
As Streetsblog points out, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes will still have a chance to review the AIS report and determine whether or not Degianni should be charged with knowingly leaving the scene of a crash, but at present he faces no charges.
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