A driver has been busted for a Bronx hit-and-run last year that killed a bicyclist heading home from morning prayers at a mosque, police said Tuesday.
Edward Montero, 28, was arraigned Tuesday on an indictment charging him with manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $100,000 bail.
Montero allegedly sped away after striking Thierno Balde, a 24-year-old Guinean immigrant, on the morning of Feb. 23 last year at Melrose Ave. and E. 161st St.
“I gave him that bike so that he could get around,” Thierno Balde’s sibling Mamadou Balde, 37, told the Daily News at the time.
Video from the crash shows Balde riding along E. 161st St. when the driver of a Jeep Grand Cherokee plows into him while apparently speeding south on Melrose Ave. Balde, 24, was traveling through a steady red light, police said.
Medics rushed Balde, who wasn’t wearing a helmet, to Lincoln Hospital, but he couldn’t be saved.
Balde was born in Guinea and worked in finance and banking in the West African country before coming to the U.S. only half a year before the fatal collision, his brother said.
“He graduated college and looked to move here,” Mamadou Balde, 38, said. “It was his first time in America. … He liked America.”
Montero’s lawyer, James Kilduff, said Montero “looks forward to his day in court,” adding, “I’m confident he’ll be vindicated.”
