Yingyi Li, 30, killed by falling tree. (William C Lopez/New York Post)
A pregnant woman was killed last night when a 60-foot oak tree fell over and crushed her as she sat on a bench by a lake in a Queens park, police said.
Yingyi Li, 30, was in Kissena Park at around 6 p.m. when the horrific accident occurred.
The tree toppled over on a slope that leads to Kissena Lake, landing on the bench and a jogging path.
“There was just so much blood,” said a witness, Salvatore Delligatti, 64. “The tree just crushed her.”
Witnesses said that an ambulance arrived within minutes and Li was taken to New York Hospital Queens, where she was declared dead. She was bleeding profusely and in cardiac arrest when medics arrived, according to police.
A source said that Li was about five months pregnant.
Delligatti said his wife and dog were walking on a path near the tree when it fell.
“The tree barely missed them,” the Flushing man said, explaining that his wife was uninjured but upset by the tragic incident. “It fell on the bench crushing the woman sitting there.”
“It’s scary,” Delligatti said, adding that old trees are becoming a hazard in the park. “There are a lot of rotten trees. Their root systems are just gone. They’re falling down in groups.”
Others agreed the city’s Parks Department has not maintained the space well enough.
“They just aren’t taking care of this park anymore,” said Artie Latieri, 54. “These trees are really old. A lot of these need to be taken out before somebody else gets hurt.”
Queens state Sen. Tony Avella, who was in the park last night, said that the city should be spending more resources on maintaining existing trees instead of planting new ones.
“How many incidents have to happen before we recognize we are not maintaining existing trees? It’s deplorable,” Avella said in a statement last night.
A spokesperson for the Parks Department did not return a request for comment last night.
In June, a tourist from Indiana was seriously injured when she was struck by a falling tree branch while walking through Central Park with her husband.
In 2010, a 6-month-old baby was killed and her mom injured by a falling branch near the Central Park Zoo. A Brooklyn man was killed by a branch in Central Park earlier that year, and a Google engineer was severely injured there in a similar accident the year before.