At the time of Gary White’s January 10 memorial service 14 days after the 77-year-old succumbed to injuries he received when struck by an SUV while crossing the street in front of Alexander Yosman Tower, the six-story apartment building he called home, community members remained impatient for answers.
Any police report describing the facts of the incident and body-cam footage from the responding officers have both so far been withheld, despite numerous Freedom of Information Law requests from city residents, news organizations, and personal-injury lawyer Joe O’Connor, who has been retained by White’s family.
Reached by telephone on January 9, Kingston police lieutenant Patrick Buono said that no report had been completed because an investigation was ongoing. He referred residents to the original January 2 statement which the police department and mayor Steve Noble posted on Facebook.
“I can’t give you much more than what’s there,” Buono said.
What’s there is incomplete. It acknowledges that a car accident had occurred, that as a result Mr. White died eight hours later at the Westchester Medical Center, and that the driver of the SUV, 20-year-old Mallory Kitchen, did not try to flee the accident and had cooperated fully.
What it didn’t say is that Kitchen wasn’t arrested, wasn’t ticketed, and wasn’t compelled to undergo a sobriety test. After hitting White, she provided the information asked of her and was free to go.
Mallory Kitchen is white. Gary White was black.
“The victim did not immediately appear to be as severely injured as he obviously was,” lieutenant Buono said on behalf of the officers who had arrived on the scene. “Had they known that they were dealing with a fatal accident, [they] may have viewed things differently.”
When a driver strikes a pedestrian, he continued “it’s not standard practice to test them [for alcohol or drugs]. That’s at the officer’s discretion if they feel they have a reasonable suspicion to conduct [tests]. They can do screenings, and they can put somebody through a field sobriety test.”
Buono said there was no indication whatsoever of any impairment. There was initially no indication of wrongdoing on the part of Kitchen. Even if there had been, he would not be free to share that information while an investigation was ongoing.
“I want to stress that the driver was a hundred percent cooperative.”
Joseph Coletti was the police officer who took down Kitchen’s information. That police officers at the scene didn’t recognize the severity of White’s injury baffles O’Connor, even though the police didn’t witness the accident.
O’Connor shared surveillance video obtained from two cameras attached to the Rondout Savings Bank across the street. The video shows that the driver of the two-ton sports utility vehicle only hit the brakes after impact.
The first camera watches White entering the roadway and follows his progress crossing the downtown-bound lane. He was nearly to the center area between lanes when the SUV struck him. He appears to have been lifted off the ground up onto the hood and then flung nearly across the width of Orchard Street before he hits the ground again. The second camera catches him rolling along the asphalt in the center of the road until he comes to rest face-down.
Kitchen stops her vehicle and approaches the prone form of Mr. White. A second vehicle coming the opposite direction, heading uptown on Broadway illuminates White’s body in its headlights as that driver speeds past, nearly running him over.
The next car following slows and stops. Its driver gets out and appears to offer help. At least four bystanders gather.
The police arrive within minutes.
“If you’re going the speed limit, which is 25 miles an hour, you’re traveling 36 feet per second,” O’Connor says. “Your headlights shoot 160 feet in front of you, so you’ve got four seconds so you don’t outrun your headlights. Our accident reconstruction expert estimates that Kitchen was travelling between 27 and 30 miles per hour.”
O’Connor has relied on an in-house accident reconstruction because the Kingston police didn’t call in the State Police to perform one.
Why wasn’t Ms. Kitchen ticketed for hitting a 77-year-old man crossing the street with her car? Buono points again to the Facebook post.
“This press release for the fatal accident clearly says he wasn’t in a crosswalk,” Buono said, “so therefore we can’t issue a ticket for failure to yield to a person in a crosswalk if they weren’t using the crosswalk.”
Since this press release was posted, this assertion that “White was not utilizing a pedestrian crosswalk when he was struck” has been criticized by a chorus of traffic safety advocates.
According to New York State vehicle law, crosswalks exist between any two curbs of an intersection on opposite sides of a roadway, regardless of whether lines are painted on the ground or not. Any driver in New York State must yield to any pedestrian crossing at such intersections.
A T-shaped intersection is created where Orchard Street meets Broadway, the intersection where White was crossing when he was struck. The exit from the parking lot of the Rondout Savings Bank opposite Orchard Street is three lanes wide, expanding the intersection to the appearance of a traditional four-sided intersection with four curbs, each divided from the other by asphalt.
Tomicia Spencer, speaking by phone on January 4, provides community habilitation services four days a week for White’s adult daughter Latoya, who has a developmental disability. Spencer said the allegation in the press release could be read as though White was at fault. This made her upset.
“Initially in the press release they said that Gary was jaywalking,” she recalled. “This man has been walking around this town since before I was born, and he knows how to cross the street.”
Though White had a bad hip and most often used a cane, Spencer said he was known to get around town.
“Me and Latoya would see him as far as Walmart, out in the Town of Kingston, and sometimes we’d even see him in Port Ewen. He would probably take the UCAT and then walk the rest of the way to where he was going. He was essentially a healthy man.”
What really disturbs Spencer is that family members were never contacted by the police department to let them know White had been injured in an accident. Shirley Blake, White’s sister, received that unwelcome news from the medical examiner of Westchester County after White had already passed.
“I think that at least the family should have contacted, given their condolences,” says Spencer.
As no word of the crash was offered to the public for seven days following White’s death, knowledge of the tragedy spread slowly, by word of mouth.
LaToya mentioned her father’s death to Spencer, who couldn’t be sure it had happened. She reached out to Rose Quinn, a transportation equity advocate who maintains the Safe Pass Ulster Facebook page. Quinn lost her own partner, John Lynch, when he was struck and killed riding his bicycle in Kingston in 2021.
“Tomicia called me up and she said, my client is telling me her dad was killed on Broadway. Do you know anything about that? I hadn’t heard anything. You know, we’ve had some terrible incidents here, but they usually make the news pretty quickly. I did a Google search. There wasn’t even a death announcement for this guy.”
Alder for Ward 9 — the ward in which White was struck by the SUV — Michele Hirsch, says she got the call from Quinn on New Year’s Eve.
“The week before, a man died in a fire on Fair Street,” recalls Hirsch. “They hadn’t released that name, either. But they at least released that it happened. This is a week later. Someone died and no one is even talking about it.”
She reached out to the mayor, the chief of police, and the chief of the fire department on January 1.
The next day the Kingston police department finally put out a release.
During the interim, rumors had spread. People believed there had been a hit-and-run. There was not. People have been told that Mr. White was hit outside a pedestrian crosswalk. He was not. People were told it was raining. It was not. People have been told that section of street is not well lit. It is. People believed he died at Health Alliance Hospital. He did not.
Taken first to Health Alliance Hospital in Kingston, the level III trauma center decided his injuries were so serious he should be diverted by private ambulance service, Empress, to Westchester Medical Center, a level 1 trauma center 72 miles away.
Ahead of the common council meeting on January 7, a vigil was held at the location where Gary White had been struck by the SUV. His shoes were set among flowers arranged around them in the fashion that deaths resulting from bicycles hit by cars are commemorated. Afterwards, those gathered went to attend the council meeting which began with the mayor’s state-of-the-city speech.
“We headed to city hall for the common council meeting,” says Spencer, “because Michelle Hirsch was going to dedicate the meeting to Gary’s memory. I asked Latoya, ‘How do you feel about going to the meeting after the vigil?’ She said, ‘Oh, I want to go.’ She said, ‘I want the mayor to see my face.’ We sat front and center right in front of him. He wouldn’t even look at us.”
Mayor Steve Noble released a statement on January 9.
“I am deeply saddened by the tragic death of Gary White,” wrote Noble, “and send my sincerest condolences to his loved ones. He was a valuable member of the Kingston community, and he will not be forgotten.”
In hopes of lowering the likelihood of severe injury or death when people are hit by cars, the mayor championed and managed to pass a citywide speed limit reduction from 30 m.p.h. to 25 m.p.h. last August. It went into effect in October. Shaving off just five miles per hour reduces the chances of death for those struck by a vehicle down to twelve and a half percent from 25 percent. It is an added tragedy that White was killed after regulations had been passed which should have increased everyone’s safety.
Still, Spencer alleges that the belated press release announcing the death by automobile, as well as the reluctance of the police department to release body-cam footage, is evidence of inappropriate collusion between the police department and Ms. Kitchen’s father, county legislator from the Town of Ulster and city zoning officer Eric Kitchen, whose SUV the young woman was driving.
And because the state troopers weren’t called into to perform an accident recreation following the death of White, the front of the SUV had already been repaired by the time White’s relatives retained O’Connor’s services.
Noble said the lack of an accident reconstruction was because the accident wasn’t initially fatal.
O’Connor disputes that explanation, noting it could have been performed early in the morning after it was known that White had died if the Kingston police had asked for it.
“One of our frustrations is if an accident reconstruction had been ordered, the vehicle would have been secured,” he said, “You can tell quite a bit of information. You can understand the dynamics and the speed of the impact based upon the damage to the vehicle.”
Spencer paints a discouraging picture.
“I’ve been here all my life. And my family’s been here for generations,” she says. “And I observe the fact that everyone here is connected – police, city officials, building inspector, health department. It’s all connected. They all know each other, and they all try to cover each other’s ass.”
Mr. Kitchen has not responded to a request for comment submitted via his city e-mail address.
“I would like for Latoya’s family to get clear answers as to what happened to their father,” said Spencer. “I would like them to know that it wasn’t their father’s fault. I would like somebody to say that to them. None of that has happened. Not even a phone call. Not from the police. Not from the mayor. Nothing.”
When the results of the police investigation are released, along with the footage from the body cameras the police officers wear, whatever that information will indicate, it’s hard to imagine that the incident wouldn’t have been reported to the public immediately, on Facebook, city-hall stationary and in every newspaper if the roles of driver and victim were reversed.
Gary White matters.
Join the family! 
