A hit-and-run driver killed a 28-year-old nurse still in her scrubs just one block from the Brooklyn hospital where she worked the overnight shift.
Jiayi Zheng, 28, was crossing at 55th Street and Third Avenue in Sunset Park around 7:30 a.m. Saturday when a black Cadillac sedan ran a red light and struck her, according to officials and footage of the crash. She wore forest green scrubs from her shift at NYU Langone-Brooklyn Hospital, where she served as a medical-surgical unit nurse.
Zheng was thrown into the air and landed on the median. Medics rushed her to the same hospital where she had just finished working, but she died from head and neck injuries.
The driver, who police sources said had Pennsylvania plates, never stopped.
“I heard the bang. Her bag was over here, and they left her there,” witness Antonio Perez told News 12 Brooklyn.
“The car just kept on, it never stopped for nothing at all.”
Sen. Andrew Gounardes, who represents the neighborhood, noted that the crash occurred on a roadway long known to be dangerous. A Department of Transportation redesign plan for the stretch was presented in 2023 but never implemented.
“While the investigation proceeds, I am once again calling on @NYC_DOT to work with the community to make 3rd Ave safer,” Gounardes wrote on X. “Just over a year age we lost two elderly neighbors to a similar crash, and 3rd Ave remains one of the most dangerous corridors in Brooklyn. Enough is enough.”
Zheng’s death marked a grim pattern for the avenue. She was the eleventh person killed while walking or biking the two-mile stretch of Third Avenue that runs under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway since 2014, according to advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. She was also the ninth person killed by a hit-and-run driver in New York City in just the past two weeks.
“New York City streets should be the envy of the world, but we are the envy of no one today,” Ben Furnas, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
The location carried particular resonance for hospital staff. In 2020, nurse Clara Kang, 31, was killed by a motorcyclist while biking home from the same hospital, just one block from where Zheng fell.
Zheng’s colleagues remembered her as a “loving nurse and hard worker” in the medical-surgical unit, according to News 12.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Jiayi Zheng, a nurse at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn,” a hospital spokesperson said in a statement. “Our nurses play an essential role in caring for others with compassion and dedication, and this loss is being felt across our entire community.”
The driver remained at large as of Sunday afternoon.