Being a traffic cop is a dangerous job, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly pointed out after an NYPD traffic agent was hit by a truck and killed on Saturday. But the officer, Kalyanarat Ranasinghe, thought he had left the line of danger when he stepped out of traffic to make a phone call. According to the New York Post, Ranasinghe was standing in front of a parked pump truck when it began to move. “The truck clipped him, rolled over him,” a doorman who witnessed the accident told the Post. “His leg got caught up in the truck.” After the truck knocked Ranasinghe over, it “rolled him up into the tire,” the doorman told the Post. Ranasinghe spent two and a half hours pinned under the truck’s front right wheel, the New York Times adds. The death comes just a couple days after the Post reported pedestrian fatalities were up this year.
