A Coach Complained About a Dangerous Intersection. Then He Was Killed There.
The New York Times
A high school football coach was fatally struck by a driver in the Bronx. He was one of three pedestrians killed in traffic over the weekend.
In 2017, after a crash at a Bronx intersection injured five people, a witness, Dwight Downer, complained about speeding drivers.
“People don’t know how to slow down,” Mr. Downer told WABC-TV. “People are in a hurry to go nowhere.”
Over the weekend, Mr. Downer, a beloved football coach, was killed by a car yards from that same intersection, across the street from his home in the Laconia section of the borough.
Mr. Downer, 60, was getting out of his car a little after midnight on Saturday when a pickup truck and a BMW collided at Eastchester Road and Givan Avenue, sending the BMW careening into Mr. Downer and several parked cars, the police said. He was taken to Jacobi Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Mr. Downer was one of three pedestrians killed by drivers over the weekend, an especially deadly two days in a year that has so far seen more than 100 New York City pedestrians killed in traffic, a nearly 13 percent increase over this time last year.
A father of two, he was a volunteer football coach for the Bronx Buccaneers, an independent youth football program, and for DeWitt Clinton High School, his alma mater.
