Police have identified the 9-year-old Brooklyn boy who was struck and killed by a school bus driver Friday morning while he was on his way to school.
Little Joel Jacobowitz was five blocks from his home in Williamsburg and trying to cross the street when he was hit by the 49-year-old bus driver as he was turning left from Lee Ave. onto Lorimer St., cops said.
“I am devastated by the loss of a 9-year-old boy struck this morning while crossing the street in Williamsburg,” Mayor Mamdani said Friday on X. “My heart is with his family and loved ones as they endure this tragic loss.”
“Children should be safe walking around our city, and this horrific road death is a painful reminder that we must continue to use every tool available to make our streets safe for all New Yorkers,” the mayor added.
Medics rushed the child to Woodhull Hospital, where he died. 1010 WINS reported he was buried in New Jersey.
After striking the boy, the driver initially continued on, but quickly returned to the scene after somebody flagged him down and told him he had struck someone.
A woman who lives on the family’s block on Saturday evening described the young child as a “sweet, innocent boy.”
The family was not at home, a number of other neighbors in the close-knit community said.
At the accident scene, Abraham Schnitzer, 28, said the intersection is complicated and could be dangerous for small kids since three streets meet there — Lee Ave., Lorimer St. and Wallabout St.
“You have from here coming cars, and also from here is turning the cars,” he said.
Schnitzer guessed the driver might not have seen the little boy.
“The bus is usually more harder to see because a bus, it’s higher and the kid is so short,” he said. “If he would see, he would never do it. I mean, he drives children.”
It was not immediately disclosed if there were children on the school bus when the accident occurred. No charges were immediately filed as police were still investigating the incident.
A local resident noted that the intersection’s redesign shifted the crossing area roughly 15 feet away from where it previously had been.
“They moved the crosswalk. That’s why the kid was in that section. He was used to crossing there,” said Shia Kohn, 41, a father of five. “There’s no crosswalk over there to identify. It would’ve helped if he had the markings in the street.”
Councilman Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn), who represents parts of Williamsburg, said the busy, five-way intersection where the child was killed was recently under construction and had no painted crosswalks or street markings.
As of Saturday evening, despite the boy’s tragic death, white crosswalks still had not been painted at the intersection. Instead, it just remained an expanse of smooth, new, black asphalt without any markings showing where pedestrians should walk or traffic should stop.
