By Madina Toure
Jury selection will begin next week for the trial in a civil case against a driver who struck and killed a 3-year-old girl in Flushing with his SUV.
Allison Liao, 3, was hit by an SUV driven by Ahmad Abu-Zayedeh while she was crossing at the intersection of Main Street and Cherry Avenue with her grandmother on Oct. 6, 2013.
The state Department of Motor Vehicles revoked Abu-Zayedeh’s license for 30 days, according to Steve Vaccaro, the lawyer representing Hsi-Pei Liao and Amy Tam-Liao, the parents of Allison.
The trial, which opens Monday Brooklyn Supreme Court with jury selection, will center on the civil case on behalf of the estate of Allison and her grandmother, who was traumatized by the crash.
“We’re going to take the DMV determination that Mr. Abu-Zayedeh violated the law by killing Allison Liao and injuring her grandmother and we’re going to represent that at trial and we’re going to say that should be binding,” Vaccaro said.
Abu-Zayedeh stayed at the scene of the crash. No criminal charges were filed against him, and his alcohol blood content level was below the legal limit.
In November, a DMV judge threw out tickets for “Failing to Use Due Care” and “Failing to Yield to a Pedestrian” that were issued to Abu-Zayedeh shortly after the accident.
Allison’s father, said two broad changes in DMV procedures took place following the death of his daughter.
The first is that the DMV judge who is tasked with dealing with the tickets will be notified if the car accident resulted in a fatality ahead of the hearing. The other change is an additional safety hearing if the accident led to a fatality.
But he said that the only reason the DMV made an exception for them is because of a tweet he sent the official DMV Twitter account on Nov. 7, 2014 asking them why they voided the driver’s two tickets, which occurred in a matter of 47 seconds at a DMV hearing.
In the tweet, he had included screenshots from a video demonstrating that the driver ran over his daughter.
“Thirty days doesn’t seem like very much at all considering what we lost — ours is forever,” Liao said.
Vaccaro said it appears that Abu-Zayedeh’s license is still revoked.
“As far as I know, he has not reapplied so as far as I know, he still does not have a license,” he said. “If he were to reapply, they could grant it to him or they might not grant it to him.”
Reach reporter Madina Toure by e-mail at mtour
