At least three cars collided just after 6:30 a.m. Thursday at West 204th Street and Sherman Avenue in Inwood, sending vehicles jumping the curb and onto the sidewalk. At least one person was critically injured, and police closed the intersection while they investigated.
According to ABC7 New York, the multi-car pileup left two other vehicles damaged after apparently being parked at the time of the crash. Newscopter 7's Tom Kaminsky reported on the scene from the air, and the station credited Newscopter 7 with the count of at least three cars involved. Eyewitness News, which authored the original report for WABC-TV, has not published additional details on the cause of the crash or the condition of those injured.
The corner of West 204th Street and Sherman Avenue sits within the NYPD's 34th Precinct, which patrols roughly two square miles covering Inwood and Washington Heights north of West 179th Street, according to the Norwood News. The precinct's coverage area spans more than 500 acres of parkland alongside dense residential blocks. It is not yet known what triggered Thursday's collision, and no charges have been announced.
A Corridor With a Grim History
This is not the first time Sherman Avenue has seen a multi-car crash send vehicles onto a sidewalk full of pedestrians. Three blocks away, at Sherman Avenue and West 207th Street, a speeding driver ran a red light in August 2022, t-boned another car, and launched it onto the sidewalk, killing two local pedestrians, as reported by Streetsblog New York City. That crash killed Inwood residents Joel Adames and David Fernandez.
The driver in that case, Leandro Diaz-Ramirez, had been traveling 59 mph in a 25 mph zone while under the influence of marijuana. He was convicted of two counts of second-degree manslaughter and sentenced in March 2024 to 5 to 15 years in state prison, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. It remains unknown whether Thursday's crash involved similarly reckless driving, and investigators have not said whether moving violations or red-light running were factors this time.
Community members in the 34th Precinct have repeatedly pushed for street redesigns along Sherman Avenue. Traffic safety records cited by CBS New York noted at least 68 traffic incidents and injuries along the corridor between 2018 and 2022, and city officials had rejected requests to install speed humps because the roadway was deemed too wide for standard speed bumps.
Citywide Safety Gains Amid Local Concerns
The Inwood crash comes even as New York City's overall traffic safety numbers have been trending toward historic lows. The city recorded 205 traffic fatalities in 2025, the lowest annual death toll since record-keeping began in 1910 and a 31% drop since Vision Zero launched in 2014, per data cited by Giampa Law. In the first half of 2026, the city reported 46 pedestrian deaths, a 13% decline from the same period the prior year, according to the New York City Department of Transportation.
Those citywide gains followed sustained advocacy from Inwood crash victims' families, who pushed for red-light cameras along high-risk corridors like Sherman Avenue. In October 2024, New York State enacted legislation allowing the city to quadruple its red-light camera program from 150 to 600 intersections through 2027, according to the Office of the Governor of New York. The city's transportation department began installing roughly 50 new cameras per week starting in late 2025 to reach that limit, prioritizing locations with high historical crash rates, though it is not known whether the Sherman Avenue corridor is slated for coverage.
Whether Thursday's crash will prompt renewed scrutiny of the intersection remains to be seen. It is also unclear whether the NYPD's Collision Investigation Squad will pursue charges, including reckless driving under New York Vehicle and Traffic Law Section 1212, which covers operating a vehicle in a manner that unreasonably endangers the public and can carry up to 30 days in jail. No such determination has been announced in connection with Thursday's crash.
