Amy DeGise NJ councilwoman hits UberEats cyclist & drives off as are calls are made for the elected official to resign.
Calls are being made for a NJ councilwoman to resign after she was allegedly caught on video hitting a cyclist with her SUV and knocking the man off his bike, only to drive away without stopping.
Jersey City councilwoman Amy DeGise was captured on camera (see below) slamming into Andrew Black at 8 a.m. on July 19, causing him to fly over vehicle’s hood and fall to the ground, according to hudpost.com.
CCTV street footage shows DeGise having the right-of-way, as her Nissan Rogue was seen driving through the intersection while the light was green, before hitting Black and sending him flying onto the hood of her car before falling to the ground.
Right before the incident, Black had gone through a red light.
‘I look left, suddenly I just hear ‘Ba[m].’ I get hit,’ said Black, a 29-year-old UberEats deliveryman. ‘I roll over and I’m in such pain.’
Resign. Now. pic.twitter.com/Z5bUT2x6ch
— 🐚 (@clammyfresh) July 26, 2022
Holding elected officials to a high standard
Instead of stopping to help, the lawmaker drove away from the intersection of Martin Luther King Drive and Forrest Street according to Black, who was able to stand up shortly after the hit and run accident.
Black didn’t suffer any major injuries — but is angry that a community leader failed to do the right thing.
‘Someone of prestige [who is] demanding to uphold and clean our streets or whatever they’re calling it… can’t even do it themselves,’ Black told hudpost. ‘It really upset me.’
Although DeGise appeared to have the right of way, she was later given a summons for leaving the scene of an accident and failing to report it, according to newjerseyglobe.com.
A Change.org petition calling for the councilwoman’s resignation had garnered more than 752 signatures by Thursday.
‘As an at-large member of the council, Councilmember DeGise has the hefty task of representing the full city and the best interests of all its residents,’ Megan Carolan, who started the petition, wrote online.
‘By striking and abandoning one of those residents, in a time of crisis, she has shown she cannot be trusted to put the well-being of residents first. To hit a constituent and leave them speaks to a deeply troubling level of self-preservation instinct, and one that has no place in public service,’ she added.
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop has since decried DeGise’s decision to leave the scene as a ‘tremendous mistake,’ although he has refused to support calls for her resignation.
DeGise who is also the chairwoman of the Hudson County Democrats, has to date declined to respond to media overtures for comment.
And then there was this comment on social media that caught this author’s attention: ‘Lives are worth more than being right, and both were wrong!’
