N.J. cab driver struck in head with hockey stick, dies in N.Y. crash
N.J. cab driver struck in head with hockey stick, dies in N.Y. crash:- A New Jersey cab driver fatally crashed his car Saturday night in New York City after a pedestrian struck him in the head with a hockey stick, police said.
Randolph Tolk, 68, of West New York, died at Lenox Hill Hospital after he struck a center divider just before midnight at West and Horatio streets in New York, authorities said.
Minutes before the crash, Tolk got into an altercation with the pedestrian, Kohji Kosugi, 39, of Manhattan, at West 20th Street and 11th Avenue in Chelsea, police said.
There, Kosugi struck Tolk over the head with a hockey stick then fled on foot, authorities said.
Kosugi was arrested Sunday morning and charged with manslaughter, New York police said.
In a statement, Uber said Tolk had been one of its drivers for a few years and was not on a trip during the incident. He was licensed with the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission, the ride-sharing company said.
Fernando Mateo, union head of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, had initially told reporters Tolk was not licensed.
Before Tolk crashed, the assailant hit him on the head with a hockey stick, knocked him to the ground and stepped on his chest before he could get up, Mateo said. He speculated that Tolk suffered a concussion and fainted while driving down the road.
“If he wouldn’t have gotten hit, he wouldn’t have died,” Mateo said during a press conference posted online by ABC7. “I believe that that young man that killed him, or that beat him and caused his death, deserves to go to jail for a very long time.”
Before Kosugi was arrested, the federation of taxi drivers offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Tolk’s assailant.
The victim’s 31-year-old son, Andrew Tolk, told The New York Times that while his father maintained a Post Office box in West New York, he had been living with family in Brooklyn.
His son told the New York Daily News that Tolk was a father of two and a grandfather of three young children.
“He would put everyone else before himself,” Andrew Tolk told the Daily News. “I’m numb.”
Source:-Â http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2017/11/nj_cab_driver_dies_in_crash_after_struck_with_hock.html
