A young pregnant woman was killed and a second woman seriously injured Friday when a van plowed onto a Manhattan sidewalk at rush hour and mowed them down.

The reason for the crash was unclear, but some witnesses told reporters that the van's driver and a passenger had been driving slowly alongside the women, catcalling them, in the moments before the vehicle lurched forward and slammed into a building.

Police arrested the driver, Keston Brown, 27, of the Bronx. He was charged with second-degree manslaughter, felonious assault and driving while intoxicated.

Killed in the incident was Ysemny Ramos, a 29-year-old mother of two from Brooklyn. Relatives said she had a third child on the way. She had been headed home to celebrate the third anniversary of her wedding.

"She was full of love," her distraught husband, Renaldo Ramos, told the New York Post. "She refused to see the glass half empty and she always filled up my cup when I saw it half empty."

The accident happened at about 5 p.m., just a few blocks from the Empire State Building.

A second, 37-year-old woman, one of Ramos' co-workers at a building consulting firm, was taken to the hospital in serious condition.

The crash was one of two bad ones Friday involving vehicles that hopped a curb.

An hour earlier on the Upper West Side, seven people were injured when a taxi hurtled into a pizzeria, shattering its windows. That wreck left one person in critical condition, and two others in stable condition, city fire officials said. There were no arrests.

Frances Rivera was at the pizzeria counter with her daughters at around 4 p.m. when the plate glass windows exploded. "My kids flew from the impact," she said.

Her 8-year-old, Tianna, was among four people with minor injuries, cut by flying glass when the yellow SUV hit Mama's Pizzeria on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her 4-year-old was unharmed.
 

Copyright Associated Press