Former Mayor David Dinkins Sued for Alleged Hit-and-Run on Upper East Side

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A food deliveryman is suing David Dinkins, the former mayor of New York, for an alleged hit-and-run accident that occurred on the Upper East Side in June.

Deliveryman Rodrigo Garcia, 32, claims the former mayor clipped his bike and then drove off, in a lawsuit filed last Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court, The New York Times reported. At the time of the collision Garcia was making a food delivery on York Avenue near 69th Street, reported the Times. Garcia suffered two broken bones in his ankle.

Dinkins responded to the lawsuit by denying that he was driving recklessly in a statement sent to the Times.

"I take my responsibilities as a driver in New York City very seriously,” Dinkins said in the statement.

In the statement, Dinkins said that he was driving his wife Joyce to New York Presbyterian Hospital and that she was in “medical distress." The statement also said that Dinkins did not know he hit Garcia until a bystander told him and that he returned to the scene after checking his wife into the hospital emergency room.

Garcia's lawyer, Joel J. Turney, did not return a request for comment.

>>> Read the full New York Times story here.

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