Victims of sexual abuse by
Catholic clergy or by authority
figures at school have rights.
NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY LAW HAVE
EXTENDED THE TIME PERIOD IN WHICH TO FILE
YOUR SEXUAL ABUSE CLAIM. ACT NOW TO GET
YOUR CLAIM TIMELY FILED.
12 COURIER LIFE, AUG. 2-8, 2019
ANOTHER TRAGEDY: Mourners held up photos of Em Samolewicz and the names of the 17
other cyclists killed in New York City this year at Samolewicz’s vigil in Sunset Park.
Photo by Trey Pentecost
Sunset Park mourns
slain cyclist at vigil
BY ROSE ADAMS
Mourners gathered on Tuesday evening
to hold vigil for a fallen Brooklyn
cyclist, whose life was cut short
by a tractor-trailer that struck her on
Third Avenue in Sunset Park Monday.
“She was kind, she was generous,”
said a teary-eyed friend of slain cyclist
Em Samolewicz. “We were both doored
last week, but she didn’t make it.”
Samolewicz, a 30-year-old Sunset
Park resident, was traveling north
along Third Avenue near 36th Street
at 9 a.m. on July 29, when she swerved
into the path of a massive Freightliner
truck while trying to avoid being
doored by a parked van, cops said.
Paramedics rushed the victim to
NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn,
where she was pronounced dead, according
to police.
Samolewicz’s death marks the 18th
cyclist fatality citywide, nearly double
the 10 bikers who died in 2018 —
the safest year on record. She’s the
13th cyclist to die in Brooklyn, where
more cyclists have perished compared
to other boroughs in eight of the last
12 years.
Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio
called the cyclists’ deaths “a crisis
and emergency,” and announced his
plan to dramatically expand the city’s
bike lane network , adding 80 miles
of protected bike lanes — including
a two-way path along Sunset Park’s
Fourth Avenue. But to many mourners
at Samolewicz’s vigil, the mayor’s
plan is too little, too late.
“The Fourth Avenue protected
bike lane was supposed to be completed
from Atlantic to 65th Street
last year,” Councilman Brad Lander
(D-Park Slope) told the crowd. “We’ll
never know if it had been completed,
if Em would’ve been riding on that
protected bike lane instead of here.”
Biking advocates blamed elected
offi cials for pandering to motorists
for the mounting cyclist deaths.
“The parking culture that generations
of mayors and city council have
upheld are the reason for these tragedies,”
said Marco Conner, the deputy
director of Transportation Alternatives,
a nonprofi t dedicated to decreasing
car usage.
Other mourners remembered the
life of Samolewicz, who hoped to become
a yoga teacher serving transgender
and impoverished practitioners.
“She was about to start training
to become a teacher,” Lea Bender, a
friend of Samolewicz from her yoga
studio, said before reading a statement
Samolewicz had written about
her love for the meditative practice,
and her hope to become a yoga
teacher.
“There’s nothing quite like coming
off a beautiful class. I hope to be able
to offer that someday — to use what
I know in a healing fashion to make
space for transgender and gendernon
conforming people in yoga, for
poor people in yoga, and for self-discovery,
because I have a lot to learn,
and I can’t actually imagine I could
ask for much more,” Samolewicz had
written.
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