A New York City firefighter has been killed while responding to a car accident in Brooklyn.
Steven Pollard, 30, was racing to help victims on the westbound side of the Belt Parkway around 10 p.m. last night. He tried to jump from one side to the other when he slipped through a gap in the Mill Basin Bridge and fell 52 feet below.
Pollard was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
“It’s a terrible loss for the department. To lose a member just at the beginning of his career like this is devastating to us,” Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.
Pollard worked at Ladder Company 170 and had only been on the job for a year-and-a-half. His father is a retired firefighter and his bro ther works at Ladder Company 114.
“This is a family that’s done so much for New York City and now they’re going through this loss and this pain and it’s a very, very tough situation,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
Pollard is the first firefighter to die in the line of duty since Michael Davidson was killed on a movie set in Harlem last March.
There were injuries in the two-car accident on the Belt Parkway.