UES Woman Dead After Land Rover Crash: Police

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A woman tragically hit by a Land Rover driver while crossing the street just steps from her home has died, Patch has learned.

Sophia D’Antoine, 30, suffered for nearly a week after she was struck by a 72-year-old man behind the wheel of a luxury SUV, police confirmed Monday.

She lived a short walk from where the driver drove into her, police said.

On April 2, D’Antoine was crossing York Avenue at East 87th Street at about 9:30 p.m. when the 72-year-old driver of a 2017 Land Rover driving north on York Avenue smashed into her as she was in the crosswalk, according to the final report from the NYPD Highway District Collision Investigation Squad.

The driver then swerved and smashed the luxury SUV into a yellow 2011 Kia Niro cab in the opposite lane, demolishing the front of the vehicle, and sent it careening into a parked 2022 Ford Explorer, which was also damaged, police said.

Medics rushed the critically wounded D’Antoine to New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center. Officials did not provide an exact date of when she died from her injuries, but officials told Patch on Friday that she remained in critical condition.

The yellow cab driver was brought to Elmhurst Hospital with injuries to his neck and back, police said.

An NYPD spokesperson said that the Land Rover driver remained at the scene, but was not charged or issued a summons. No arrests have been made and the investigation by the NYPD Highway District Collision Investigation Squad remains ongoing, officials said Monday.

Records show that since April 2022, the Land Rover has racked up five school zone speed camera violations, mostly in Queens along Hillside Avenue and Horace Harding Expressway.

A final collision report did not clarify what the status of the traffic lights were at the time of the collision, and a spokesperson had no further information regarding if investigators had knowledge of the traffic light conditions at the time of the collision.

The violence came just a day after an 84-year-old man was hit by an SUV just a few blocks away on April 1. That driver, police said, was issued a summons.

Hours before D’Antoine was fatally struck, a man was rammed by a car as he tried to break up a fight in Yorkville.

The Upper East Side has seen 470 total vehicle crashes in the past year, according to Crashmapper NYC, which maps and aggregates city crash data. Those crashes resulted in three deaths and 570 injuries, according to the data.

Last fall, the Upper East Side saw a series of crashes when drivers slammed into pedestrians all over the neighborhood. One of those drivers was intoxicated and left an elderly woman critically wounded.