Amazon Crime: Driver Mows Down Pedestrian, Charged with Assault

A 25-year-old driver of an Amazon e-delivery van was charged with two counts of felony assault after cops said he deliberately drove the vehicle into a 79=year-old man after words were exchanged at a red light on the Upper East Side.

Steven Saslow told Our Town he was carrying packages home from Trader Joe’s and was standing at an intersection on the corner of E. 57th St. and First Ave. waiting for a red light to change so he could proceed to his Sutton Place home.

An Amazon e-vehicle driven by Elian Cedano Garvajal was stopped at the light as well but before it turned green, Saslow said Garvajal started through the intersection and bumped into the packages Saslow was carrying.

Words were exchanged. “I yelled something like ‘hey watch where you’re going’,” Saslow told Our Town. At that point, he said Garvajal “did a U-turn and ran me over and knocked me down.”

The intersection is at a two way cross town street near a Morton Williams supermarket and not far from the Queensboro Bridge which was the scene of a deadly collision in May between a racing bike and a high speed stand up scooter. Both victims died. More recently, on the West Side, a 43-year-oldavid jogger was hit from behind by an e-bike driving the wrong way in Central Park on West Drive near 64th Street. The incident sparked outrage across the city amid calls for tighter regulations. The jogger only recently emerged from a medically induced coma, where she had to have a section of brain cut out to relieve brain swelling.

Witnesses at the intersection saw the July 19 incident on the UES and one woman started calling 9-1-1.

”He was screaming at me and when he saw the woman dialing 9-1-1 he said, ‘I’ll kill you if you call 9-1-1,” Saslow said.

A traffic agent across the street saw the commotion and arrived on the scene. “I think she called the local precinct as well,” said Saslow.

Within minutes several police vehicles from the 17th Precinct arrived and cops arrested the suspect.

Saslow said he suffered bruising to his left leg and right elbow and was driven to New York Presbyterian Weil-Cornell Medical Center where he was treated and fortunately released after a few hours.

Prosecutors said Garvajal was charged with two counts of felony assault and was held overnight before being arraigned in criminal court on July 20. Prosecutors had requested bail of $15,000 but a judge ordered him released on his own recognizance.

His defense attorney, Khushboo Sapru, with the public defender’s office, did not return a call or email seeking comment.

An Amazon spokesperson said that the suspect was not an employee of the company, but is believed to have worked for one of the delivery subcontractors under what is called the delivery partner program.

Our Town forwarded Amazon the charging document from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, but a spokesperson could not determine the status of the individual by press time. “We are looking into this,” he said.

Saslow, the 79-year old victim said he is a long-time resident of Sutton Place and owns a local restaurant on the Upper East Side. He said problems with reckless e-bikers accelerated with the pandemic and the rise of e-bike delivery vehicles and have grown worse in recent years.

He said police told him the person arrested had been involved in at least one past incident and that enough witnesses told police that it was purposeful.

“I’ve lived in New York for 35 years and I am sick of this s**t,” he said. “It’s dangerous to cross the street nowadays,” he said.

Garvajal is due back in court on September 22.