DAD DIED ON HIS NEW BIKE
Driver in Brooklyn hit-&-run still at large
A Brooklyn dad fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver bought the motorcycle he was riding just a few months ago, his heartbroken mother said Monday.
Donnell Oakes, 45, was headed south on Marcus Garvey Blvd. in Bedford-Stuyvesant early Sunday, when a dark-colored sedan blew a red light on Halsey St. and pulled right into his path, video obtained by the Daily News shows.
Oakes tried to veer out of the car’s way but didn’t have time, slamming into the vehicle’s side. EMS rushed him to Interfaith Medical Center, where he died about 15 minutes later from severe head trauma.
“I don’t even think he had that motorcycle three months,” Oakes’ mother, Flo Oakes, 61, told the Daily News. “I don’t know why he bought it. I don’t like motorcycles. I told him not to do it, but he’s a grown man and that’s what he wanted to do.”
Video shows the driver back away as Oakes lay motionless in the middle of the intersection. Police at the scene said a badly damaged gray Nissan Altima parked at a hydrant down the block was the hit-and-run driver’s abandoned vehicle. The driver has not been caught.
“I would tell him to turn himself in because you took someone’s life,” Oakes’ mother said. “It’s not fair for you to walk around like you did nothing. And then you ran away, you didn’t even turn back to see if there was anything wrong with him. You just ditch the car and ran away.”
Oakes, who had two sons, ages 28 and 26, and two young daughters, ages 2 and 11 months, worked for the Postal Service sorting mail, his mother said.
“It’s extremely hard for the whole family,” she said. “I’m still in disbelief. I can’t walk without the tears flying out of my eyes. It’s senseless. He has two babies, older sons, too, but these two babies will grow up without their father.”
She called him “the rock” that holds his family together.
“He’s always the one you can count on,” she said. “If there was anything in the family you called him: ‘D, I need help.’ He’d say, ‘All right, I’ll be there.’ ”
Oakes was beginning to make a new group of friends in the motorcycle world, according to his neighbor A.J. Taylor, 63.
“It’s a shame, to be honest. He had just bought that bike and he was still getting familiar with it,” Taylor said. “That’s what’s so sad — he had just got around to riding it the right way. He had to take it to the shop once for burning out the clutch, but he was getting the hang of it.”
The fatal crash was the latest in a string of hit-and-runs across the city over the weekend.
A woman was killed and a second woman badly hurt when a hit-and-run driver struck them in the Bronx Saturday night.
Another woman was critically hurt after a hit-and-run driver mowed her down in a Queens intersection Saturday morning.
“It’s just crazy, crazy insane, just that people are being so mindless,” Flo Oakes said. “You have cyclists and motorcyclists out there, and you’re not being mindful of how you’re driving your car. You’re just doing your own thing and don’t care about what happens.”
At least 175 people have been killed in car crashes so far in 2021 through Aug. 24, according to NYPD data, putting the city on pace to record its highest number of traffic deaths since 2014, when Mayor de Blasio took office and launched his Vision Zero road safety program.
City Transportation Commissioner Hank Gutman said both of the weekend’s fatal hit-andrun crashes happened within school zones, near speed cameras that can by law only operate from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays.
Both crashes happened outside that time period.
“Once again, we urge the state Legislature to allow our cameras to operate 24/7. There must be consequences for dangerous drivers, no matter what time of the week they break the law,” Gutman said.
“Speed cameras are an efficient, equitable way to reduce speeding, and we must do everything in our power to stop violence on our streets.”