Bronx zoo van crash: police release names of seven victims

The van landed in a wooded area on the edge of zoo property that’s closed to
the public and far from any animal exhibits, Mary Dixon, a spokeswoman for
the zoo, said. The vehicle lay mangled hours later, its right doors ripped
off and strewn amid the trees along with items from the car. Next to the
heavily wooded area are subway tracks and a train yard.

” I’ve been in the fire department 30 years,” Chief Werner said. “Sometimes
you come upon events that are horrific and this is one of them.”

It’s not clear what caused the van to go out of control around 12.30 pm. The
southbound side of the highway was closed briefly on Sunday afternoon while
police investigated but later reopened.

The medical examiner’s office said it expected to release the victims’ causes
of death on Monday.

The accident was the second in the past year where a car fell off the same
stretch of the Bronx River Parkway. Last June, the driver of an SUV heading
north lost control and the SUV hit a divider, bounced through two lanes of
traffic and fell 20 feet over a guardrail, landing on a pickup truck in a
parking lot. The two people in the SUV were injured.

City agencies will be asked to look at safety issues on the highway including
guardrail height, Bronx borough President Ruben Diaz Jr said in a statement
on Sunday.

“My prayers, as well as those of my office and all Bronxites, go out to the
families of the seven victims,” he said.

The wreck was the deadliest in New York City since the driver of a tour bus
returning from a Connecticut casino in March 2011 lost control and slammed
into a pole that sheared the bus nearly end to end, killing 14 passengers.

Source: agencies

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