Reckless stylist plows into car, kills 2-year-old

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Two Killed in Cambria Heights Crash

July 20, 2003

By Xiomara Lorenzo and Melanie Lefkowitz
Staff Writers

A car full of children looking for fireflies collided with a speeding motorcycle in a Cambria Heights intersection Saturday night, killing the bike’s operator and a 2-year-old girl riding in the car, police said Sunday. Three other children were also injured in the deadly crash. “I got there and they let me see her,” the dead girl’s uncle, Lewis Murphy, 30, said of his trip to the hospital. "She was gone. All because of a bike. “Her eyes looked like little buttons all the time,” said Murphy, cradling a pair of white leather booties his niece, Janae Forde, was wearing when she died. Relatives said Janae; her mother, Viviann Rodriguez, 23; two cousins, Kaia and Chenee Williams, 6 and 12; and Rodriguez’s foster brother Joshua Gonzalez, 14; were on a mission to find fireflies in a local park at 10 p.m. Saturday. They couldn’t find any in their own backyard, relatives said.

Rodriguez paused for a stop sign at 121st Avenue and Springfield Boulevard before proceeding west into the intersection, where she collided with a Suzuki motorcycle driven by martial-arts expert Curtis Battle, 33, heading south on Springfield, police said. Rodriguez’s 2003 Hyundai then crashed into two parked cars. Battle did not have a stop sign but appeared to have been speeding, police said. He was pronounced dead at Franklin General Hospital and Janae at Long Island Jewish Hospital.

Kaia Williams, of Staten Island, was in critical condition at Long Island Jewish, police said. Chenee, also of Staten Island, and Joshua Gonzalez, of Hollis, were stable at Franklin General Hospital. Viviann Rodriguez, who was not injured, was left completely distraught, police said. She told relatives she didn’t see the motorcycle until it hit. “She never saw it, all she did was hear it,” Murphy said. Murphy said all the children were sleeping and seat-belted in the car when it crashed. Police said Janae was in a child-safety seat. “She was just learning how to put her sentences together,” Janae’s grandmother, Emily Rodriguez, said. Emily Rodriguez said she passed the accident scene Saturday night without realizing it. “I was coming back from Pathmark and I saw a lot of lights,” she said. “I thought it was construction.”

Police said Battle, a black belt in karate and owner of the Martial Arts Academy on Merrick Boulevard, was riding with another motorcyclist at the crash. A witness said several motorcycles were rallying there all day. “There were a bunch of bikers,” said the witness, who did not want his name printed. Friends and relatives said Battle, of Jamaica, was teaching karate while working on a degree in physical therapy. He’d been riding motorcycles since high school and was never reckless, they said.

“He wasn’t a daredevil,” said Eli LaSalle, 23, a student of Battle’s. “He has his principles and discipline. He lived by these every day.” Battle’s relatives said he was running a summer camp for kids out of his academy, which he bought in 1994. “‘Ma, I see this building I want,’” his mother, Carolyn Battle, recalled Curtis saying. " ‘I want to put in a karate school.’ I said he should wait until after he was done with college, but he went on with it." His students, they said, looked to him for lessons not just in karate but in life. “He was one of a kind,” his brother, Cedric, said.

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/brooklyn/nyc-hit0721,0,4482942.story?coll=nyc-manheadlines-brooklyn

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On a Boulevard in Queens Where Motorcyles Roar, a Deadly Crash Angers Residents

July 21, 2003

By MICHAEL WILSON

mid the thuds of small bodies hitting the mats of his Queens dojo, Curtis Battle preached responsibility to his young martial-arts students. Be careful on the street, he told them. Use sound judgment.

Viviann Rodriguez, too, tried different ways to capture the attention of the children around her. On Saturday night she had just strapped her only child, 2-year-old Janay Ford, into her car seat to take her and three cousins to a park to chase fireflies. She never saw the motorcycle coming, Ms. Rodriguez said. Mr. Battle, riding a Suzuki motorcycle, broadsided her red Hyundai as she tried to cross the five lanes of Springfield Boulevard at 121st Avenue in Cambria Heights. The Suzuki tore into the car, killing Mr. Battle and Janay, and injuring Janay’s young cousins, one critically. “I never heard him or anything,” Ms. Rodriguez said yesterday. “He just came out of nowhere, and that was it. I wasn’t even sure what hit me.”

Police did not cite or charge Ms. Rodriguez and would not say whether Mr. Battle, 33, had been speeding. The accident, officials said, is under investigation.

Angry neighbors said the corner is especially dangerous because there is just a stop sign, no traffic light, and because motorcyclists tear along Springfield Boulevard. “You’re just waiting for someone to die,” said Andrew Wiles, 49, describing cyclists driving with their legs above the handlebars, doing stunts. “It’s like a drag strip.” Yesterday, motorcycles sped past the same corner, seemingly oblivious to the carnage the night before. It was nearing 10 p.m. Saturday, Ms. Rodriguez, 23, said, as she and the children had given up on finding fireflies in Cambria Park. They returned to the Hyundai to try another park.

About the same time, a motorcycle rally was breaking up on Springfield Boulevard, witnesses said, with many bikes streaming south. One of them was the Suzuki ridden by Mr. Battle, 33, off work for the day from his martial arts studio, Static’s, nearby on Merrick Boulevard in Laurelton. Ms. Rodriguez, traveling west on 121st Avenue, said she stopped at the stop sign at Springfield Boulevard, glanced north and saw a red light a block away, at 120th Avenue. The next thing she knew, she said, something hit her Hyundai so hard that it spun the car around. “The bike was in the car,” said a witness, a motorcyclist who identified himself only as “the Kidd.” “They had to cut the bike out of the car. It was like a zoo out here.” The intersection is framed by corners containing apartments, homes, and Montefiore Cemetery, a cemetery dating to 1908. “There must have been 50 or 60 motorcycles, up and down, back and forth,” a cemetery spokesman said yesterday. “Those motorcycles, they fly down Springfield Boulevard. These guys are crazy.”

Ms. Rodriguez was not injured. The youngest cousin, Kia Williams, 6, of Staten Island, remained in critical condition yesterday at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. Her sister, Chenee Williams, 12, and Joshua Gonzalez, 14, were in stable condition in Franklin General Hospital. And two mothers opened two doors to mourners yesterday.

Mr. Battle’s parents and his brother, Cedric, came to the place Mr. Battle loved, Static’s. Summer camp at the studio had begun this month for children under 13. “You will watch your child transform,” Mr. Battle had written on a flier taped to the front window, “and become more responsible, display a more positive attitude and a greater sense of self in his or her daily activities.”

Mr. Battle, the flier said, had studied martial arts for more than 23 years, and held a black belt in eight different styles. He opened his dojo in 1994 and taught, in broad strokes, karate, tae kwon do, aikido, kick boxing and other practices. In his flier, he told students: “You must learn a combination of the three fighting zones in order to be a victor in street self-defense (punching, kicking and wrestling).” Mr. Battle’s mother, Carolyn Battle, remembered how her son had talked about opening a karate school as he was studying physical therapy, and then one day, there was a karate school. His students “respected him and loved him, and he loved them,” she said on the sidewalk yesterday before heading back inside. One student, Eli, 23, of Laurelton. said Mr. Battle “taught me about where I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to be doing,” “He wasn’t a daredevil or anything like that,” he added.

Nearby, in Hollis, family members remembered Janay as a bright girl. “She loved to write,” her mother said. “You don’t see too many 2-year-olds who go to sleep with a pen and a pad.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/nyregion/21CRAS.html?ex=1059364800&en=1a92b7d3e71b1d57&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

3

If any good comes out of this tragedy, I can say that there’s one less stylist out there to spread his poison among the masses and that’s something that we can all be thankful for.

What a worthless human being, it’s tragic that it cost the life of an innocent child to remove his filth from this world.

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Yeah, that left some bad SCARS.

5

Thankful for somebody’s death? You are a sick sick person.

Worthless human being? I dare you to fly to New York and say that to his family.

I know alot of people say messed up things in a joking manner, and even if you are joking you really crossed the line.

“But some apes they gotta go, so we kill the ones we don’t know” - ‘Ape shall never kill Ape’ by The Vandals

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Worthless human being? I dare you to fly to New York and say that to his family.

Just refer them to this site or send them a link.

I know alot of people say messed up things in a joking manner,

Actually, I’m quite serious.

and even if you are joking you really crossed the line.

Let me see, this piece of human debris snuffed out the life of a beautiful 2-year-old little girl and I’m the one that “crossed the line?” I’d say your priorities are a bit out of whack mister.

7

DEATH OF AN ANGEL

By IKIMULISA LIVINGSTON and LARRY CELONA


ALWAYS LAUGHING’:
Janae Forde, 2, died riding back home from a park, where she was catching fireflies.

July 21, 2003 – A 2-year-old Queens girl - coming home with her mom from a trip to catch fireflies in a local park - was killed when a biker came roaring down the street on a high-performance motorcycle and slammed into their car, police said yesterday. The 33-year-old motorcyclist, whose bike tore through the metal and came to rest in the back seat where the child and two other youngsters were sitting, also died in the horrific crash in Cambria Heights Saturday night.

Vivian Rodriguez, 23, of St. Albans, had taken her bright, precocious girl, Janae Forde - who loved to imitate a dance in the movie “Lilo and Stitch” - along with three other kids to search for fireflies just after sundown. Her grief-stricken grandmother, Emily, said Janae loved lightning bugs. On their way back, tragedy struck at the intersection of Springfield Boulevard and 121st Avenue. A longtime motorcycle enthusiast, Curtis Battle, 33, had hit the road on his 2000 Suzuki. He was riding south on Springfield Boulevard as Rodriguez headed west on 121st Avenue in her 2003 Hyundai.

Authorities believe Battle was trying to catch up with a group of other bikers, sources said. “She stopped at the stop sign,” said Rodriguez’s brother, Louis Murphy. “She looked and she proceeded to go out. The next thing you know, the bike went through the second door - in the back,” he said, clinging to the little white sneakers Janae had been wearing. Murphy recalled Janae as a happy child who was “always playing and laughing.” Also in the car were Vivian’s cousins Kia, 6, and Chanee, 12, and Emily’s foster son, Joshua Gonzalez, 14.

Kia was at Long Island Jewish Hospital in critical condition, and Chanee was in guarded condition at the same hospital. Joshua was treated at Franklin General Hospital and released. Vivian was not hurt.

Cops said their preliminary conclusion is that Battle was speeding

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/1140.htm

8

That is terrible.

Now imagine your pain is a white ball of healing light, that’s right, your pain, the pain itself is a white ball of healing light… I don’t think so!