UBER SLAY BUST
Hockey guy ‘hit driver’
An amateur hockey player was arrested Sunday in the death of an Uber driver who was whacked in the head with a hockey stick by a pedestrian outside Chelsea Piers, cops said.
Kohji Kosugi, 39, allegedly attacked Randolph Tolk, 68, during a road-rage dispute that erupted late Saturday night at West 20th Street and 11th Avenue.
Tolk was driving his Toyota Camry southbound and stopped at the crosswalk when Kosugi, who was on foot, began tapping on the vehicle’s hood with his stick, a witness told police.
The men exchanged angry words through the window of the car before Tolk got out to confront Kosugi, cops said,
They continued arguing until Kosugi used the hockey stick to knock the older man to the ground, then stomped on his chest, cops said.
Tolk, a grandfather of three, got back into the car and headed south, driving about half a mile before crashing into a center divider near Jane Street, cops said.
Paramedics responded and rushed him to Lenox Hill Hospital, where Tolk, who lived in West New York, NJ, was pronounced dead.
Kosugi, who is a chef at a Japanese restaurant, ran away into the Chelsea neighborhood but was arrested at around 2:40 p.m. and charged with manslaughter, according to police.
He declined to comment when cops hauled him out of the 10th Precinct station house in handcuffs with a hood pulled down low over his eyes.
Uber said Tolk was off duty at the time of the incident.
According to a profile posted on the site Alumni US, Kosugi earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Siena College in Albany and a medicine and publichealth degree from St. George’s University, a medical and veterinary school on the Caribbean island of Grenada.
He claims online to be a doctor, but state records don’t show him licensed to practice in New York.
He also claims to have worked at both the Brooklyn Hospital Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where staff scientists list him as a coauthor of two research papers.
Neither Brooklyn Hospital nor Sloan Kettering returned requests for comment.
Kosugi’s Facebook page also shows him posing in hockey gear with a team sponsored by The Green Front restaurant in upstate Canandaigua.
A woman who lives next door to Kosugi on East 10th Street in the East Village said, “I’ve only seen a woman leave that apartment. I’ve never seen him.”
Cops stationed outside Kosugi’s apartment said a woman tried to get inside but they were under orders to keep everyone out.