Dangerous Roads newsletter: A searing reminder when my sons cross a deadly Long Island intersection 

There’s a good chance your community has at least one story like that of Amir Porterfield, the 15-year-old Copiague boy whose 2023 death led the first story in Newsday’s Dangerous Roads project.

My neighborhood’s Amir Porterfield is Zachary Ranftle.

Zachary was 12 when he was fatally hit by an SUV while crossing a street in Valley Stream on Dec. 11, 2014. Zachary was on his way to Valley Stream Memorial Junior High School, where my 14-year-old son, Chris, is currently in eighth grade. Chris and his older brother, AJ, who goes to a nearby high school, regularly cross that same intersection — South Franklin Avenue and West Merrick Road — when walking home from school. And every time they do, I think of Zachary.

I didn’t know him or his family, and I’d be lying if I said I thought about him much at other times. That’s the reality of crashes like the ones that claimed the lives of Zachary, Amir or any of the other 2,100 people killed by cars on Long Island over the last decade. For most of us, the names of the victims — if we can remember them at all — emerge in our minds only when we drive by the scenes of their deaths.

That’s a luxury Patrick Flood, Zachary’s dad, will never know. Although he and his family have left Valley Stream for a "fresh start" in Culpepper, Virginia, "there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it."

Zachary was the eldest of three brothers, a gifted baseball player and a Boy Scout with Troop 109. My two boys later joined the same troop, meeting each week in a church at the same corner where Zachary was killed. The driver of the GMC Yukon was driving with a suspended license because of an earlier DWI arrest. He got a sentence of 18 months in jail.

Only months earlier, Zachary’s parents allowed him to start walking to and from school — a responsibility that he cherished, despite admitting feeling "nervous" about crossing at that intersection.

"You always say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. You know to look both ways,’ " Flood recalled. "To this day, I still think about that — [Zachary] going, ‘Dad, I really don't feel comfortable crossing that street.’ "

Amir’s mother, Iesha Kyles, is similarly haunted by second guesses. "You just think about it after — like, what could you have done? What should I have done?" Kyles told Newsday. "Is there anything that can be done?"

We’re banking on the answer to that last question being "yes."

One red dot, several broken hearts

One of the things Newsday has done is create an interactive map cataloging every reported car crash on Long Island since 2022.

As a journalist, I find the map informative and riveting. As a parent, I find it horrifying and depressing.

The map, created by Newsday data solutions journalist Karthika Namboothiri, features lavender-colored circles containing the number of crashes in each Long Island community in 2024. As I scanned the map looking for the circle with the highest number, I found it hovering over my house: "2.6k" crashes in North Valley Stream in a single year.

That circle includes the intersection where Zachary was killed a decade ago. It also includes the Southern State Parkway exit where NYPD officer Clifford Saintvil crashed into a tree and died on Jan. 7 of last year.

I’d encourage you to spend some time exploring the map. Find the purple circle nearest your neighborhood. Zoom in to find a colorful swarm of dots: teal denoting all crashes; purple, crashes with injuries; orange, serious injuries; and red, deaths.

Let the gravity of all those dots wash over you. And then remember that each of those dots is attached to at least one family, just like the grim statistics of those killed and injured.

"As a parent of someone that lost their child, it's not numbers. It's people," Flood said.

Whenever visiting New York, Flood said he makes a point to stop by the intersection. "I go there just to just to talk to him, because that was the last place he was alive," Flood said.

As much as Flood knows his son is inextricably linked to that street corner, "it's not the reason I want [people] thinking about him."

"As a parent, you want the boys, if they played baseball together, to go, ‘I remember when we won ... the championship. Zach had that hit’ or ‘that catch,’ " Flood said. "But it's like, ‘I remember this is Zach's corner where he was hit.’"

Does your community have a story like Amir’s or Zachary’s? How has it affected you and your community? Share it with us at roads@newsday.com.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.