July 29, 1998
A father and his 11-year-old son were struck and killed by a charter bus yesterday that plowed into them at a notoriously dangerous Broadway intersection.
Scores of work-bound commuters watched helplessly as Peter Dennison, 55, and his son, Morgan, were hit crossing 22nd St. at Broadway on their way to the boy’s school.
The father and son were carried a half block on the front of the bus before it could screech to a stop.
Witnesses told cops that bus driver Cornelius Still barreled through a red light before striking the Dennisons at 7:45 a.m. But Still insisted the light was green and was not immediately charged.
“There was a deadly thud,” said Glenn Hutcherson, 44, a motorist who witnessed the accident. “The next thing I know, they were lying on the street, their legs were intermingled, and the father was under the son.”
They were lying a half block from their hats a baseball cap and floppy fishing hat which were knocked from their heads.
“It was a horrific visual scene,” said Max Sabrin, 45, who works nearby. “My heart goes out to them.”
The Dennisons, just blocks from the subway stop where they caught the No. 6 every day to Morgan’s upper East Side school, were dead on arrival at St. Vincent’s Medical Center.
Their wife and mother, Jeannette Kossuth, a massage therapist, was working at New York Downtown Hospital when she was told about the accident.
“I hope you understand this is my husband and my only child,” said Kossuth, 45, her voice quivering, as she returned to the family’s small W. 21st St. apartment with a priest and a friend. “I’m in shock.”
The site of the accident is part of a tangle of streets around where Broadway and Fifth Ave. crisscross. From 1991 to 1996, 51 pedestrians and bicyclists were injured in the area, according to statistics compiled by Transportation Alternatives, a pedestrian advocacy group. One person was killed.
“This is a very dangerous area,” said Elizabeth Ernish, the Transportation Alternatives campaign coordinator. “Ten injuries per year is very high.”
Said George Esthimiagis, manager of Zoop Soups on E. 23rd St. and Broadway: “All the streets crisscross, so no one knows what’s going on until they get to 23rd St. It’s a really bad light.”
Morgan, who suffered from mild autism, was a fifth-grader at Reece School. Friends called him a sweet kid who loved dinosaurs and often visited museums with his father.
Peter Dennison taught kindergarten and pre-school at Park Avenue Christian Church Day School and had a passion for sculpting.
“He was a gifted teacher and talented human being,” said Nancy Vascellaro, the school’s education director. “He was loved by everybody.”
A spokesman for the bus company, Premier Coach, said they’d never had any problems with Still, and were cooperating with the authorities.
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