Two men were killed and three other people were critically injured when a driver lost control of his S.U.V. on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan on Friday evening and crashed into a crowd of people, a spokeswoman for the Police Department said.
The crash happened at 6 p.m. near Amsterdam Avenue and West 109th Street on the Upper West Side. A black Mercedes-Benz S.U.V. smashed into two parked cars, crossed a bike lane and landed in a crowd of people, coming to a stop against a parking meter with its front wheels on the sidewalk.
The driver was a 61-year-old man. It appeared that he was intoxicated, and he was taken into custody at the scene, the police said. The men who died were 35 and 46 years old. The names of the driver and the crash victims have not been released.
Jorgé Santiago and his wife, Eva, were crossing Amsterdam Avenue at 109th Street at the time of the crash. It started two blocks south of them, as they saw the black S.U.V. strike a car at around 107th Street, they said. The vehicle then accelerated north. When it reached 109th Street, it struck a curb that separates the bike lane from the rest of the street. That sent the S.U.V. flying into the air, they said.
It landed near the spot where a group of men from the neighborhood like to socialize and play dominoes, the couple said. The men on the sidewalk were well known to longtime residents in the area, they said.
The S.U.V. “jumped in the air, and when it came down, it smashed on everybody,” said Mr. Santiago, 53, who cried as he described the crash.
A cyclist was in the bike lane at the time of the crash, according to an interview that was posted on X with a woman who witnessed the events and said she was a neighbor. The cyclist was struck and thrown to the sidewalk, she said, where emergency workers tried to deliver CPR. After the crash, the woman said, another man was trapped beneath the black S.U.V. None of the details could be independently confirmed on Friday evening.
The police remained on the scene into the night, and sections of Amsterdam and 109th Street were still blocked by police tape at 10 p.m. on Friday.
Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.
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