Ambulance driver charged after fatal Midwood left turn
At 6:36 a.m. on April 2, official records say a driver making a left turn in an ambulance failed to yield at Ocean Avenue and Avenue O, killing 44-year-old pedestrian Cherry Cayetano Sobel; police later charged driver Michael Gontar.
What We Know
A driver in a Maimonides Medical Center ambulance made a left turn from Avenue O onto Ocean Avenue early on April 2, 2026, and hit Cherry Cayetano Sobel, a 44-year-old pedestrian. The official crash record says she was crossing with the signal at the intersection and lists failure to yield as a contributing factor. Reporters described the case as a hit-and-run because the driver kept going; police sources initially said detectives were considering whether the driver realized a person had been hit. Nearly three months later, police charged ambulance driver Michael Gontar with failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care.
A left turn as Sobel crossed Ocean Avenue
The official record places the crash at 6:36 a.m. on April 2, 2026, at Ocean Avenue and Avenue O in Brooklyn. It says the driver was making a left turn in an ambulance and lists failure to yield as a contributing factor. The fatal pedestrian was 44 years old and was crossing with the signal at the intersection.
News reports identified the pedestrian as Cherry Cayetano Sobel. Police and law enforcement sources said the ambulance driver was turning from Avenue O onto Ocean Avenue when Sobel was hit. Medics took her to Maimonides Medical Center, where she died.
The driver kept going; charges came later
Early coverage described the crash as a hit-and-run. CBS New York reported that a witness said a city bus driver tried to chase after the ambulance driver, but the driver did not stop. ABC7 reported that detectives believed the driver likely did not realize a pedestrian had been hit.
Maimonides Medical Center said its EMT staff involved in the incident had been suspended pending the NYPD investigation. In July, police said Michael Gontar, 42, had been charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care.
Sobel was a nurse on her way to work
The Daily News, New York Post and other outlets reported that Cherry Cayetano Sobel was a registered nurse and a mother of two. Her husband, Jeff Sobel, told the Post she was on her regular route to work when she was killed: “She left for work happy. She took that route many times.”
Ocean Avenue is a high-crash Brooklyn corridor
The crash happened at Ocean Avenue and Avenue O in Brooklyn. CrashCountNYC’s Crash Finder shows that Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn had 1,188 crashes, 965 injuries, 63 serious injuries and 4 deaths from Jan. 1, 2022, through June 1, 2026.
Streetsblog, citing city transportation data, reported that Ocean Avenue is a Vision Zero priority corridor and that the area around Avenue O is a Vision Zero priority area.