A hardworking deliverista struck by an out-of-control driver high on PCP in Harlem was killed on his son’s 10th birthday, and the boy still hasn’t been told his dad is dead.
Darlyn Zacarias, 28, was struck on his e-bike on W. 125th St. and Frederick Douglass Blvd. around 8 p.m. Thursday by the speeding driver of a red Hyundai Tucson with South Carolina plates. The victim’s family believes he was working his job delivering food for an app-based service when he was killed.
Obtained by Daily News
Pedestrians jump for cover as an out of control car speeds down 125th St. near Frederick Douglas Blvd. on Thursday night. (Obtained by Daily News)
“His son now has no father. His son doesn’t know that his dad passed away,” the victim’s uncle Edwin Zacarias, 47, said in Spanish. “Someone is gonna have to stand up and be there for him.”
Darlyn, whose nickname given by family is “Mantequilla,” Spanish for butter, after his favorite food, came to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 9 with his late mother.
“Everyone loved him. He was just very kind,” the uncle said. “He never hurt anyone.”
For the past two years, Darlyn was working as a deliverista to get by. He lived in the Highbridge section of the Bronx.
“We told him and warned him about the job, that it was a very dangerous job,” Edwin said. “But he was just a hardworking guy.”
Darlyn is the fifth cyclist killed on New York City’s streets and the 34th New Yorker killed in a traffic crash so far this year, according to the bicyclist advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
An e-bike rider was killed and four others injured in a crash on W. 125th St. and Frederick Douglass Blvd. in Harlem Thursday night. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
“Darlyn was already working as a delivery driver when his grandmother warned him. Darlyn argued that jobs were hard to come by and that he had no other choice,” a cousin of the victim said. “During the chaotic period he spent working there, e-bike accidents began to occur, and that was when his grandmother started giving him advice.”
The Hyundai sent off a spray of sparks as it roared down W. 125th St. moments after striking Darlyn and a second e-bike rider. The other rider was hospitalized in critical condition.
“Delivery work is among the most hazardous jobs in New York City,” Ligia Cuallpa, the executive director of advocacy group Los Deliveristas Unidos, said in a statement. “One in five workers has been injured on the job, and the occupation has a fatality rate five times higher than construction. Behind these numbers are workers navigating congested streets, unsafe road conditions and dangerous driving behavior while under constant pressure to move faster themselves.”
Cops charged 49-year-old Kevin Crosby with aggravated vehicular homicide, manslaughter and driving while impaired by drugs. Like Darlyn, he lives in the Bronx, according to cops.
“He is on video driving at an extremely high rate of speed, as compared to other vehicles, straight into a person on a bike,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Emily Hong said at Crosby’s arraignment late Friday. “He clearly also strikes another cyclist with his vehicle.”
“Both cyclists fly in the air and land a significant distance away,” Hong added.
Darlyn was rushed to Mount Sinai Morningside, where he died. The other e-biker was taken to Harlem Hospital in critical condition.
Three other victims, a 40-year-old in a parked Toyota RAV4 and two men, ages 28 and 23, in a parked Lexus, were rushed to Harlem Hospital with minor injuries. The Tucson hit both vehicles and an unoccupied NYPD vehicle before finally coming to a stop after slamming into and wedging under an 18-wheel tractor-trailer.
Crosby, who wasn’t seriously hurt in the crash, was clearly intoxicated when cops pulled him out of the mangled Hyundai, court papers say.
“The defendant had pinpoint pupils, slurred speech, was swaying on his feet, and had an odor of what he believed to be PCP or K2 on his breath,” prosecutors said, the latter referring to synthetic marijuana.
Crosby later admitted that he had smoked PCP that morning, then smoked weed before driving, Hong said.
His defense attorney Seann Riley said Crosby’s apparent intoxication “doesn’t tell the full story.”
“The car had mechanical issues and the brakes and the steering wheel were jammed,” Riley told Judge Jeffrey Gershuny.
Gershuny ordered Crosby held without bail until his next court appearance. The judge also had Crosby’s driving license suspended.
Crosby has an extensive criminal history with 21 arrests stretching back to the 1990s, prosecutors said. Over the past three decades, he’s been arrested for gunpoint robbery, drug possession, assault and criminal trespass, and in 2007 was arrested for operating a motor vehicle without a license, officials said.
“A person like that should be in jail for many, many years” and “shouldn’t even be on the streets,” Darlyn’s cousin said. “If he would have been in jail … Darlyn would have still been alive.”
