By Adam Kramer
A 6-year-old boy was in critical condition after being hit by a car at 8:40 a.m. Tuesday as he stood with his mother on the corner of 90th Avenue and 247th Street, an intersection the community blames for scores of accidents over the past 20 years.
“I was at the bus stop and heard a loud bang,” said Linda Rudolph, who lives on the southeast corner of the intersection.
“I turned around and saw the kid go up in the air,” she said. “My 6- 1/2-year-old daughter screamed. I grabbed her and ran down the block.”
She said the corner where the accident occurred and the corner of 91st Avenue and 247th Street are like “drag strips” during rush hours. People use the streets to avoid the lights on Jamaica Avenue and to get onto the Cross Island Parkway, she said.
On her front lawn Rudolph has two large metal cylinders – similar to the poles in front of supermarkets to prevent people from taking shopping carts – sunk 4 feet into the ground and secured with cement because about five years ago a taxi cab jumped the curb and wound up on the stoop of her home.
Police identified the boy who was injured Tuesday as Gzulota Raxul.
A spokeswoman for Long Island Jewish Health System said the boy was in critical condition. She would not release any other information because he was a minor.
Reconstructing the accident from what people at the scene said and police reports, a 1999 Green Mercury Tracer heading west on 90th Avenue collided with a 1982 Maroon Toyota Cressida, which was heading south on 247th Street. The Toyota bounced off the Mercury and hit a No Standing sign, ripping it from the ground, said Detective Carolyn Chew, a Police Department spokeswoman.
She said the sign then hit the child.
Rudolph said she saw the Toyota spin around and lurch forward. It finally came to rest facing west in the intersection. She said her daughter knows the boy and said he attends kindergarten at PS 133.
“I've never seen anything like it before,” Rudolph said. “His school backpack was in front of him over his face.”
Angela Augugliaro, president of Queens Colony Civic Association, said her civic had asked the city Department of Transportation to put in four-way stop signs at the corners at 90th and 91st avenues because of the accidents. But she said the DOT has approved a plan to make 90th Avenue one way eastbound and 91st Avenue one way westbound.
“I've been here for 22 years and these intersections have been a bone of contention for years,” she said. “This area is so bad during rush hour because it is easy access onto the parkway.”
Another resident, who has lived on 90th Avenue for seven years, said she heard the crash three blocks away and from what she could see at the accident scene, the Mercury ran the stop sign.
The woman, who did not want to give her name, said she does not allow her children to play outside because of the traffic on the street.
“As a mother of three children, it was frightening,” she said. “What I saw was terrible.”
The police said that no summons were given and the accident was still under investigation.
