Flatbed truck driver accused of killing NYC bicycling advocate Adam Uster charged with traffic law violation
A flatbed truck driver who fatally struck a bicycle advocate three months ago has been charged in the man’s death, cops said Tuesday.
Angel Mejia, 19, was charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian or bicyclist for the May 1 crash that ended Adam Uster’s life.
Uster, 39, was returning home from a grocery run in an unprotected bike lane on Franklin Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, when Mejia turned his flatbed truck onto Lexington Ave., cops said.
The driver hit Uster, knocking him off his bike.
Medics rushed him to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he died, cops said.
Failure to yield is a vehicular traffic law violation. Those charged face fines of up to $500 or 15 days in prison, officials said.
Mejia lives in Staten Island, about 18 miles from where the crash took place. He remained at the scene after the crash.
Uster was about a mile and a half from home when he was struck.
His mother told Streetsblog her son was a bicycling advocate and a member of Transportation Alternatives. He was returning from a nearby supermarket and had a bicycle trailer full of groceries when he was hit, she said.
“The last thing I said to him was, ‘Be safe,’” the mom, Annie Goldner, told the website. “He went out the door, took his bike, went to Wegmans.”
