By Michele Evans / NYweeklyRecord.com / Date: 8/31/2026
Category: Public Safety / Transportation / Accountability
NEW YORK CITY, NY –
A 28-year-old nurse was killed while walking home from an overnight shift Saturday, renewing urgent questions about why a safety redesign remains unfinished on one of Brooklyn’s deadliest corridors.
Jiayi Zheng was crossing Third Avenue at 55th Street in Sunset Park shortly before 7:40 a.m. when the driver of a black Cadillac traveling south struck her, according to police accounts reported by ABC7 and Gothamist. Zheng suffered severe injuries and was taken to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, where she worked and where she was pronounced dead.
The driver fled. Police had not identified the driver or announced an arrest as of Monday morning, and the investigation remained open. Those facts make the crash both a criminal case and an accountability test for a city that has known for years that Third Avenue is dangerous.
Zheng lived six blocks from the crash site, Gothamist reported. She was heading home after caring for patients through the night. Her hospital mourned a nurse remembered for compassion, while her union said her death was a loss to her workplace and community.
Her death was not an isolated failure. Transportation Alternatives says six pedestrians and five cyclists have been killed since 2014 on the two-mile section of Third Avenue beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In 2020, NYU Langone nurse Clara Kang was killed while biking home from an overnight shift near Third Avenue and 56th Street, one block from where Zheng was struck.
The city Department of Transportation presented a corridor redesign in 2023 covering Third Avenue from Prospect Avenue to 62nd Street. The plan proposed changes intended to slow turning vehicles, improve pedestrian crossings and organize traffic on the avenue. Yet the broader safety project was put on hold under the prior administration, according to Gothamist.
That delay now sits at the center of the public-interest question. A known danger was documented. A redesign was presented. Residents and workers kept using the corridor. Another person did not make it home.
City Hall said Sunday that a new Third Avenue redesign was announced as part of the current administration’s Brooklyn-Queens Expressway plans. DOT said it is committed to advancing the project and expects to release more information in the coming months.
But no construction schedule, completion date or full design was identified in the reports available Monday morning. Until those details are public, the city’s renewed promise remains just that: a promise on a corridor where 11 pedestrians and cyclists have already been killed in 12 years.
Zheng’s death also came amid a burst of fatal hit-and-run crashes citywide. That broader pattern raises another unresolved question: whether enforcement, street design and rapid crash investigations are keeping pace with the danger faced by people walking and biking.
Police are still seeking the Cadillac driver. Anyone with information should contact the NYPD. The city, meanwhile, owes Sunset Park something more permanent: a clear timetable, a funded design and measurable safety changes before Third Avenue claims another life.
Sources
ABC7: Driver flees after fatally striking nurse headed home from work
Gothamist: Brooklyn nurse killed by hit-and-run driver walking home from shift at NYU Langone
NYC DOT: Third Avenue, Prospect Avenue to 62nd Street, November 2023
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