No Charges, Few Answers in Two Tarrytown Pedestrian Deaths

Tarrytown police have not issued any charges or found many more answers in the two recent pedestrian fatalities we’ve had in the villages.

On Route 119 in the early evening on Nov. 26, an 80-year-old woman was struck by a car, dying shortly after her arrival at Westchester Medical Center.

Police reports from the night describe Bernadette Brennan of Tarrytown as going into possible cardiac arrest at the scene as emergency responders were first arriving. 

Lt. William Herguth confirmed that she was not in a crosswalk when she was traversing White Plains Road at Meadow Street. She was wearing black, and it was raining shortly before 5 p.m.

The police report gives more of a timeline of Brennan's death and the investigation surrounding it:

Tarrytown police received multiple 911 calls, including one from the driver, reporting a pedestrian had been struck by a car on White Plains Road at 4:54 p.m.

Officers, Tarrytown Volunteer Ambulance Corps and Greenburgh paramedics were responding. 

Police reported that the victim, was having trouble breathing. Officers asked for a faster response from medical crews. 

At 5:16 p.m, TVAC reported the victim was in cardiac arrest. Detectives were called to the scene minutes later. At 5:55 p.m., police were notified that Brennan had died at Westchester Medical Center, pronounced by emergency room staff at 5:50 p.m.

At 5:57 p.m., police asked for a county accident investigation team to come to the scene. They arrived at 7:10 p.m 

Brennan was identified by a family member at the hospital at 8:04 p.m. A case was opened at the medical examiner's officer at 8:29 p.m. 

The driver was taken by two detectives to Phelps Memorial Hospital.  

By 9:48 p.m., the scene was clear. 

The driver, a 20-year-old Sleepy Hollow man who remained on the scene, was, according to a friend on Facebook, both devastated by what happened and scared for his impending arrest. 

He was not injured, reported Herguth, but went to Phelps for blood testing to see if alcohol or drugs were a factor. That, he said, is still “under investigation.”

“Unknown,” Herguth said when asked if there was any evidence the driver may have been speeding.

Brennan’s funeral was held in Irvington where she lived and attended church before moving to Tarrytown. She is described in her obituary from Edwards and Dowdle Funeral Home as a mother of seven, grandmother to 21 and great-grandmother to 7.

Memorial contributions for Bernadette Brennan can be made to the sisters of St. Francis, 250 South Street, Peekskill, NY

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On the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 20, responders performed CPR at the scene on Wildey Street on Maria Tavarez, 63, of Marcy Place in the Bronx. Tavarez, one of two women waiting for the bus on the sidewalk and struck by a suddenly accelerating car, was then rushed to Westchester County Medical Center. 

Tavarez remained in critical condition at the hospital for four days before she was pronounced dead on Nov. 24 at 6:18 p.m.

No obituary has been found online for Tavarez but loved ones celebrating her life recently left a beautiful memorial heart of roses, prayer candles protected under a small table, on the site where she was struck alongside the Walgreens entrance on Wildey and Central Avenues.

A 53-year-old female driver from Tarrytown apparently plowed through the Wildey Street entrance to Walgreens, going in the wrong direction. She drove through a fence and a small tree before striking the two women standing on the sidewalk, Lt. William Herguth said. 

Herguth said he had no further information on the cause of the crash. While LoHud.com has reported it could have been a medical issue to blame, officials are mum on this possibility. 

Tarrytown PD is still awaiting results from the county police on the condition of the car and if it might have been a mechanical, and not medical, issue. Video surveillance police reviewed he called “inconclusive.”

When asked why the driver ended up so far from the scene further down Valley Street after what some witnesses initially described as a hit-and-run, Herguth said that’s where she was “able to regain control” of the car.

The other victim that morning, a 45-year-old woman from Danbury, CT, sustained less serious injuries she was treated for at Westchester County Medical Center.