Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Speed Limit Lowered on Brooklyn Street Where Samuel Cohen-Eckstein Killed

New York traffic authorities have reportedly lowered the speed limit along a busy Brooklyn street that runs alongside Prospect Park where bar mitzvah boy Samuel Cohen-Eckstein was struck and killed by a van.

City workers installed new signs lowering the maximum speed to 25 mph on Prospect Park West over the weekend, the New York Daily News reported.

The speed limit was 30 mph last October 8 when the eighth-grader was mowed down as he returned from playing soccer in the park across the street from his home.

Traffic lights on the stretch of road were also adjusted to slow down cars.

The boy’s parents, friends and synagogue have joined a citywide push for safer streets.

“Although it is too late to have prevented Sammy’s death, we hope this change is part of a larger initiative to save lives,” the boy’s mother, Amy Cohen, said in an e-mail to the News.

Separately, the paper reported that a neighbor had to call police to stop a woman from tearing down a makeshift memorial that still stands at the site of the boy’s death, near the popular entrance to the park at Third Street.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.