A 28-year-old nurse heading home after an overnight shift at a nearby Brooklyn hospital was fatally struck Saturday by a speeding hit-and-run driver, officials said, and crash video shows.
Jiayi Zheng, still dressed in her forest-green scrubs, was crossing at 55th Street and Third Avenue around 7:30 a.m. in Sunset Park when the driver of a black Cadillac sedan ran a red light and slammed into her, according to disturbing footage of the collision.
The impact launched Zheng into the air before she came down on the median, just one block from NYU Langone-Brooklyn Hospital, where she worked as a medical-surgical unit nurse.
Emergency medical workers rushed her to that same hospital, but she died from severe head and neck injuries.
The driver, described by police sources as operating a vehicle with Pennsylvania plates, fled the scene without stopping.
“I heard the bang. Her bag was over here, and they left her there,” witness Antonio Perez told News 12 Brooklyn.
“The car just kept on, it never stopped for nothing at all.”
The fatal Brooklyn hit-and-run happened on a dangerous stretch of road, according to state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, who represents the Sunset Park neighborhood.
A Department of Transportation redesign plan for the dangerous stretch of roadway was presented in 2023 but never went into effect.
“While the investigation proceeds, I am once again calling on @NYC_DOT to work with the community to make 3rd Ave safer,” Gounardes wrote on X. “Just over a year age we lost two elderly neighbors to a similar crash, and 3rd Ave remains one of the most dangerous corridors in Brooklyn. Enough is enough.”
The tragedy unfolded just one block away from where nurse Clara Kang, 31, was killed by a motorcyclist when she was heading home on a bike from working at the same hospital in 2020.
Zheng is the ninth person killed by a hit-and-run driver in the last two weeks across the Big Apple — and 11th killed while walking or biking the two-mile stretch of Third Avenue that runs under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway since 2014, according to advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.
“New York City streets should be the envy of the world, but we are the envy of no one today,” Ben Furnas, their executive director, said in a statement.
Zheng’s colleagues remembered her as a “loving nurse and hard worker” in the medical-surgical unit, News 12 reported.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Jiayi Zheng, a nurse at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn,” a spokesperson for the hospital said in a statement to The Post.
“Our nurses play an essential role in caring for others with compassion and dedication, and this loss is being felt across our entire community.”
The driver has yet to be caught as of Sunday afternoon.
