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Incident location, Long Island
What Happened
A 38-year-old Long Island City woman was fatally struck by an unlicensed van driver while using a marked crosswalk in the Dutch Kills section of Queens on Sunday, August 31, 2025, in a midday collision that ended in an arrest just steps from where she was hit. According to QNS, officers from the 114th Precinct in Astoria responded to a 911 call reporting a pedestrian struck at the intersection of 39th Avenue and 30th Street at just before 12:50 p.m. When they arrived, they found the victim lying next to the crosswalk, suffering from severe body trauma.
EMS rushed the victim to New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, police said. She was 38 years old and a resident of Long Island City. Her death marks a devastating loss for a neighborhood just a short distance from where she was struck.
A follow-up investigation by the NYPD Highway District’s Collision Investigation Squad reconstructed the sequence of events leading to her death. As QNS reported, the victim had been crossing 30th Street at 39th Avenue, moving through the south crosswalk from east to west, when she was struck by a blue 2020 Ford Transit van. Investigators determined the van was making a right-hand turn at the intersection at the time of the impact.
Behind the wheel of that van was Abdul Billah, 60, of 188th Street in St. Albans. Billah was taken into custody near the scene of the collision and transported to the 114th Precinct, where he was formally booked. A critical detail that emerged immediately: Billah was operating the vehicle without a valid driver’s license, according to QNS, which elevated his charges beyond a standard failure-to-yield violation.
Billah’s own account of the crash, as captured in the criminal complaint, places his version of events in sharp contrast with the fatal outcome. He told the arresting officer: “I was driving, I was making a right-hand turn, the pedestrian jumped out. I felt movement in the back, I hit her with the rear tire.” The statement indicates that the victim was struck by the rear tire of the Ford Transit van as Billah completed his turn — a scenario that investigators at the NYPD Highway District’s Collision Investigation Squad continue to examine as the case develops.
The collision unfolded in the early afternoon of what was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, a period that typically sees elevated pedestrian activity in urban Queens neighborhoods. The intersection of 39th Avenue and 30th Street sits within Dutch Kills, a dense residential and light-industrial enclave just north of the Long Island Expressway and adjacent to the broader Long Island City corridor — the same neighborhood where the victim lived, less than a mile from where she was killed.
Location & Road Context
The crash site at 39th Avenue and 30th Street in Dutch Kills, Queens, lies within the jurisdiction of the NYPD’s 114th Precinct, which covers a swath of northwestern Queens including Astoria, Sunnyside, and the Dutch Kills area. The neighborhood is a transitional zone between the high-density residential blocks of Long Island City and the commercial corridors feeding into the Queensboro Bridge approach, with consistent pedestrian foot traffic throughout the day. Crosswalks at signalized intersections in this area are heavily used by residents navigating on foot between transit stops, businesses, and homes.
For road safety updates and active investigations across Queens and Long Island, longislandtraffic.com continues to monitor developments.
Investigation & Legal Proceedings
Abdul Billah was charged with two counts following the fatal collision: aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle and failure to yield right-of-way to a pedestrian. The aggravated unlicensed operation charge, as reported by QNS, reflects that Billah was operating the Ford Transit van without any valid license at the time of the fatal crash — a charge that carries compounding weight when combined with a fatality.
Billah was arraigned the same day as the crash — Sunday, August 31 — before Queens Criminal Court Judge Joanne Watters. The judge ordered him to return to court on October 1. No bail conditions were specified in the available criminal complaint details. The NYPD Highway District’s Collision Investigation Squad, the unit assigned to all fatal and critical-injury traffic crashes in New York City, has been tasked with the ongoing investigation. The squad’s findings will likely inform whether additional or upgraded charges are pursued by prosecutors as the case moves forward.
Broader Impact
Under New York law, aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle in the first degree — applicable when a driver operates a vehicle while knowing their license is revoked or suspended — is a Class E felony, and when that unlicensed operation contributes to a fatality, prosecutors retain the option to pursue enhanced charges including criminally negligent homicide. The current charges against Billah represent the initial filing; as the Collision Investigation Squad completes its reconstruction of the crash at 39th Avenue and 30th Street, the legal picture could shift substantially before his October 1 court appearance.