A crash
involving a New York Police Department (NYPD) car led to four people getting
critically injured on Thursday. The accident happened at around 3 pm ET when a
police cruiser crashed with another car near the Westchester Avenue and Hoe
Avenue intersection, a police spokesperson said. The force of the collision sent
the cop car a group of people on the road.

Seven
people were injured in the accident, of which four are critical, a New York
Fire Department spokesperson said. Two of those injured are police officers.

The Police patrol
chief said the accident happened when officers were responding to a report of a
stolen car when they drove over the double yellow line in the road to get around
a vehicle that was in front of them. The car quickly hit another vehicle and
veered out of control, mounting the curb and slamming into a crowd of people.

“Of course, we
don’t want to see anybody injured, especially when the officers were trying to
do the right thing,” he said, adding, “They were trying to prevent a crime in
progress, they were trying to apprehend someone who was ready to victimise a
good person in the Bronx.”

The NYPD car
crash took place merely hours after a pedestrian was struck and killed by a
Mack track around noon in Midtown Manhattan. The dead body lay under the truck
for an hour as police closed down nearby streets.

The number of pedestrians
injured and killed by vehicles in the five boroughs has begun to climb as traffic
has returned to the streets after height of the pandemic in 2020, when
pedestrian deaths dropped to 60, according to the New York Transportation
Department.

42-year-old Nelson Quinones, who was working at a
bodega nearby, saw the crash happen outside. He told New York Times that he saw
the NYPD car strike the crowd, including a little girl and an older man known
around the neighbourhood for always dressing in red clothes. The police car had
been driving “real fast” when it struck the other vehicle,” Quinones said, adding,
“It was really crazy how the cops did that.”