Nun just latest victim at killer corner
Daily News
By Ralph R. Ortega and Fernanda Santos

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Catherine Lee

Eight pedestrians have been killed or gravely injured since 1995 at the busy Chelsea street corner where an elderly nun was fatally struck by a truck Monday, records show.

During the same period, 20 other people were run over at the same intersection but escaped serious harm, according to NYPD reports submitted to the state Department of Transportation.

"One of the most common crashes comes when drivers are turning a corner and hit pedestrians - and the [city] Department of Transportation could do a lot more to prevent them from happening," said Kit Hodge, campaign coordinator for Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group.

Catherine Lee, an 80-year-old Chinese missionary, was crushed to death by a flatbed truck that rolled over her after it made a left turn onto Sixth Ave. from W. 23rd St.

In the wake of Lee's death, DOT engineers will converge at the intersection to find out if any changes need to be made to the timing of pedestrian and vehicular traffic lights, agency spokesman Tom Cocola said.

One of the options, he said, is to install a delay system that would give pedestrians extra time to cross the street before traffic is permitted to turn into the crosswalk.

Such a system already is in place for north- and southbound pedestrians crossing Sixth Ave. at W. 23rd St., giving them a nine-second head start. But there is no such protection just feet away for east- and westbound pedestrians who want to cross W. 23rd St. at Sixth Ave.

Police did not charge the truck driver, who passed a battery of sobriety tests, said his employer, Randy Ment.

"He was found to be completely clean," Ment, owner of Ment Bros. Iron Works, told the Daily News. "But, obviously, he's very shaken by what happened."

Lee, who began her missionary work in Communist China, caught a ride from a fellow nun and returned to her Chinatown apartment Sunday, after spending some time recouping from an illness at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in Westchester County.

She went to Chelsea to perform outreach work, said Sister Rosemary Huber.

"She had a lot of spunk," Huber said. "She was persistent in pursuing a path that could help other people - and she just didn't know when to stop."

Lee joined the Maryknoll Sisters in 1958, after Communists shut the convent where she lived in Hingning Kwantung, China, her hometown.

She taught grade school in Boston and in the Bronx before moving in 1982 to Chinatown, where she learned acupuncture and did volunteer work for the city's Health Department - a task she performed until her death.

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