Update below: Former Police Commissioner Howard Safir will not be charged for backing his Cadillac Escalade into a pregnant woman in the Upper East Side and then driving away, the Post reports. The Giuliani-era NYPD head struck Joanne Valarezo, who is seven months pregnant, on Third Avenue between East 80th and East 81st streets on Friday.
The SUV hit Valarezo in the shoulder, knee, and the side of her stomach, knocking her down and leaving her bruised, but not seriously injured. Valarezo said she would have been more severely injured had a female passenger, identified in the Times as Safir's wife, not shouted at the former police commish to look behind him. "Are you not looking, there’s someone there," she reportedly said. After Valarezo was hit, the Bronx woman claims she confronted Safir and said: "I'm pregnant. Did you not see?" But when cops tracked down Safir, he said he didn't know that he hit someone.
Valarezo said she was "very upset" that Safir won't face criminal charges. "It's not right, because he is a human being like anyone else, and he left the scene of a crime."
Update: Despite earlier reports that investigators would not press charges against Safir, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance says his office is looking into the incident — as well as the deaths of a pedestrian and a cyclist last week, according to StreetsBlog. A spokesperson representing the borough's new DA issued the following statement:
Traffic accidents involving pedestrians or cyclists are a serious concern in Manhattan, as the first week of 2010 showed. The District Attorney has asked the Office to conduct a review of the traffic accident involving former Police Commissioner Howard Safir. He has also instructed the DA's Vehicular Crimes Unit to do its own review of last week's traffic fatalities. The closer review of traffic accidents that cause serious injury or death will be a priority for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
