A precinct “Trunk-or-Treat” is designed to be the safest Halloween in the city. Children go from car trunk to car trunk collecting candy, in daylight, on the sidewalk outside a station house, within sight of the police. The event exists to give parents a version of trick-or-treating with no traffic and no strangers. On Thursday afternoon, Oct. 29, in Bushwick, police say, a car came up onto that sidewalk anyway.
It happened just before 4 p.m. on Oct. 29 on Knickerbocker Avenue near Bleecker Street, outside the NYPD’s 83rd Precinct, which was holding its Halloween party. According to the NYPD, as reported by FOX 5 New York, the driver went onto the sidewalk, crashed into a parked ambulance and struck several pedestrians.
Six people were hurt: three children, aged 6, 8 and 11, and three women, aged 31, 53 and 74, according to police figures reported by the New York Post. All six were reported in stable condition. Officials have not released their names. The City Politic does not name injured children, and it will not add to the graphic descriptions of their injuries that appeared in some early coverage.
The charges
Police identified the driver as Michael Marsh, 56, of Crown Heights. According to the NYPD, he is charged with two counts of vehicular assault, two counts of reckless endangerment, driving while intoxicated, driving while ability impaired, driving on a sidewalk and failing to wear a seatbelt. The case goes to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Marsh has not been convicted of anything and is presumed innocent. The charges are accusations, and the facts will be tested in court.
The Post, citing law enforcement sources, reported that Marsh’s blood alcohol content was .26. That would be more than three times New York’s .08 threshold for driving while intoxicated and above the .18 level at which the state’s aggravated DWI statute applies. The figure comes from unnamed sources rather than a court filing, and Marsh is not reported to be charged with aggravated DWI. FOX 5, citing the NYPD’s Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information, reported that his 46-year-old passenger faces no charges.
What the first reports got wrong
Early accounts of street crashes are often unreliable, and this one shows how. Some initial broadcast reports described a collision “involving an ambulance,” which made it sound as if an emergency vehicle had driven into the crowd. Police later said the ambulance was a private one, parked at the event, and was itself hit by the car. CBS New York reported that the ambulance was left with damage to its side.
Accounts of the vehicle and the sequence also differ. CBS described a black sedan that came onto the sidewalk along Bleecker and struck people before hitting the ambulance. The Post described a van. Those details will be settled by the record, the precinct’s own cameras and the bystanders’ videos, not by the first evening’s reports. The broad facts are consistent across outlets: a sidewalk, a Halloween crowd, six people injured and one man charged.
A precinct and its neighbors
The 83rd Precinct covers Bushwick. The neighborhood has a long relationship with its police, recorded in buildings as well as statistics: the old Brooklyn Police Department station house at DeKalb and Wilson avenues, built for the 20th Precinct, has been a city landmark since 1997. Events like Trunk-or-Treat are meant to strengthen that relationship. This one left parents describing a frightening afternoon, and it happened directly outside the station house.
There is a small consolation in the facts as reported. Every injured person was reported stable, and none of the injuries was described as life-threatening.
The legal question ahead
Vehicular assault, the most serious charge, is a felony under New York’s Penal Law. In broad terms, prosecutors must prove that a driver whose ability was impaired by alcohol or drugs caused serious physical injury to another person. The fact that there are two counts suggests the NYPD believes at least two of the six suffered injuries that meet that standard. Whether a grand jury agrees, and whether the charges stay as filed, is for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and the courts to decide. Marsh’s lawyer, when one appears, will have the chance to dispute the alcohol reading and every other part of the case.
What to watch
Expect the case to move through Brooklyn Criminal Court and, if it is indicted, to Brooklyn Supreme Court. The other question is practical rather than legal. Many cities that hold car-trunk events for children put concrete barriers or a line of parked police vehicles between the street and the crowd. The NYPD has not said whether its precinct events will add barriers next year. It is a reasonable question, and it is worth asking before next October.
Featured image: An NYPD patrol car in New York. Photo by Newyorker519 at English Wikipedia via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
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