NEW YORK – A 29-year-old pregnant woman was killed and a second woman was seriously injured Friday when a commercial van jumped the curb of a midtown Manhattan sidewalk at rush hour and crashed into a building wall. An hour earlier on the Upper West Side, seven people were injured when a taxi hurtled into a pizzeria, shattering its windows.
Ysemny Ramos was killed when the van struck her at about 5 p.m., just a few blocks from the Empire State Building, police said. Witnesses told reporters that the second victim, a 37-year-old woman who was taken to the hospital in serious condition, told them that Ramos was pregnant.
Police arrested the 27-year-old van driver, who was uninjured. They did not identify him, and charges against him were pending. The earlier crash uptown left one person in critical condition, and two others in stable condition, city fire officials said. There were no arrests in the taxi crash.
The pizzeria’s benches could be seen in disarray inside the shop. The cab’s front grille was seen lying against the building’s outside wall.