A 70-year-old Brooklyn woman was fatally hit by a Staten Island-bound express commuter bus just south of Union Square, police said.
According to police, on Wednesday around 1 p.m., officers and E.M.S. medics responded to multiple 911 calls of a pedestrian struck at Broadway and E. 13th Street. Roberta Lerman, 70, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Based on a preliminary police investigation, the victim was crossing Broadway, heading from west to east, when she was struck by a Metropolitan Transportation Authority SIM4C bus motoring southbound down Broadway. The bus driver remained at the scene. There are no arrests. The Police Department’s Highway District Collision Investigation Squad is investigating.
No guarantee, but it’s highly likely the MTA bus had a forward-facing camera – typically used to enforce bus lane restrictions. If this bus had a functioning forward-facing camera, I doubt images of this tragedy will be made public, but the images will reveal to the investigators whether – approaching 13th St – the bus faced a green, yellow, or red light. Even if the bus faced a green light, I’d hope the bus driver would yield … if there was sufficient time. Images captured by a functioning forward-facing camera should reveal that too.