A driver has been charged after a multi-vehicle crash in Brooklyn killed a mother and her two young daughters and also critically injured her son.
Miriam Yarimi, 32, was charged with multiple counts of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and assault in the second degree, according to ABC News 7 New York. She is also charged with reckless driving and aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle, failing to yield right on red and speeding over the limit.
The fatal crash happened just after 1:00pm on Saturday on Ocean Parkway off Quentin Road in Gravesend.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams called the incident a "tragic accident of a Shakespearean proportion."
Police said a mother and her three children were crossing the street when Yarimi, who was driving in an Audi, rear-ended a Toyota Camry. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the impact caused the Toyota Camry to be pushed aside, while the Audi continued forward, striking the mother and her kids in the crosswalk.
"I will call it like it is. This was a horrific tragedy caused by someone who shouldn't have been on the road," Tisch said. "A mother and two young children killed. Another child fighting for his life. A family and a neighborhood devastated."
Yarimi was driving while on a suspended license, and the Audi she was driving has more than 90 tickets, including more than 13 school zone speeding tickets last year, said Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas, who pushed for state officials to pass legislation that would require speed limiters to be installed on vehicles of the most reckless repeat speeders.
“This is an unconscionable tragedy that Albany can stop from ever happening again," Furnas said. "The status quo allows super-speeders to continue to put all our lives in danger, but it doesn’t have to be this way."
