A 61-year-old woman is dead after being struck by a car crossing a Queens street Wednesday morning — killed blocks from her own front door in a Democrat-run city that can't keep its streets safe but never runs short on cash for progressive pet projects.
Wang Jing was crossing Union Turnpike near Main Street in Kew Gardens Hills around 8 a.m. when a 56-year-old driver making a left turn onto Union Turnpike in a 2010 Honda Civic hit her, according to the NYPD. Jing was outside the marked crosswalk at the time. The impact threw her into the road with major head trauma. First responders rushed her to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. The driver stayed on scene and was uninjured. No arrests have been made, and the NYPD Highway District's Collision Investigation Squad is handling the case.
Jing is at least the fifth New Yorker killed by a car in the city since last week. Three cyclists and one pedestrian were killed by hit-and-run drivers in separate incidents over just five days — all unsolved.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Majority Leader Shaun Abreu called the deaths "preventable" in a joint statement, offering "thoughts" to grieving families. Thoughts and prayers from the people who actually hold the purse strings and write the laws governing street design, enforcement, and infrastructure.
Here's what's telling about the coverage: the New York Post reported Jing's death straight. Europe Says and Us Weekly didn't cover this NYC pedestrian death at all — instead running a Toronto hit-and-run and an Indiana domestic violence case. When a working-class woman dies on a crumbling Queens street, the broader media ecosystem can't be bothered.
The pattern is clear. New York City budgets billions for migrant services, equity programs, and progressive initiatives while the basic infrastructure ordinary Americans depend on — safe crosswalks, enforced traffic laws, streets that don't kill you on your morning walk — rots. Jing wasn't downtown at a gala. She was crossing the street near her home at 8 a.m., likely going about the routine of daily life that government is supposed to make possible, not fatal.
Whether Jing was outside the crosswalk or the crosswalk was inadequate is for investigators to determine. What's not in dispute is that five people are dead in a week on New York City streets, hit-and-run drivers roam free, and the people in charge are issuing statements instead of answers.
The question isn't whether these deaths are tragic — everyone agrees on that. The question is what City Hall is doing with the money and power it already has, and why working New Yorkers keep paying the price for governance that funds everything except the basics.
