6 Things About The Israeli Tennis Champ Who Tragically Died On Citi Bike
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
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He was killed at about 8:15 a.m. when he swerved to go around a parked van, struck a bus next to him traveling in the same direction and fell off the bicycle and under the bus’s rear tires, according to police. He was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital Center, police said.
The accident makes Hanegby the first fatality since Citi Bikes was launched in New York four years ago.
Here’s what we know about him and Citi Bike:
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Hanegby was 36 and worked as the director of investment banking at Credit Suisse. He lived in Brooklyn Heights with his wife and two children, according to The New York Times.
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He’s originally from Herzliya, Israel, but first came to the United States to study at Binghamton University, according to The Brown Daily Herald. He transferred and graduated from Brown in 2007.
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He played on the tennis teams at both schools and was ranked No. 66 in singles tennis in the US while at Brown, according to The Daily Herald.
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Hanegby was ranked the best Israeli tennis player when he was 16 and held the title until he was 18, when he joined the Israeli Defense Forces, according to The Daily Herald.
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Hanegby quit tennis to volunteer for the Special Forces, serving during the Second Intifada: “I hate to lose in tennis, but there are other things in life that are worse,” he told The Daily Herald in 2006. “No tennis win can compare to that feeling of knowing you helped to stop the next suicide bomber. I would definitely do it again.”
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Citi Bike is the largest bike-sharing company in the nation, and it has had more than 43 million trips in New York since it began four years ago, according to The New York Times. Four people have been killed on bicycles in New York through the end of April 2017, according to the city.
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