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Sixteen months after a hit-and-run in Brooklyn ended up killing an up-and-coming architect, the driver was charged with death, but the upgraded charges didn’t bring much relief to the victim’s sister Comforted, she still questions the driver’s callous decision to abandon serious driving. Injured woman on the road.
On August 14, 2022, Mimi Silver Liebenberg was involved in a car accident at the intersection of Pacific St. and Buffalo Ave. in Crown Heights, resulting in severe and permanent brain damage.
The driver, Clossie Spencer, backed into the vehicle while looking for a parking space and struck the victim, who was crossing Pacific Street in a crosswalk, the Daily News previously reported.
Surveillance footage recovered from nearby Kingsborough Houses showed Spencer getting out of his car, looking at the seriously injured woman, and then getting back into the car before driving away.
Liebenberg’s sister recalled her mother watching the horrific footage, saying the victim looked both ways and was “very cautious” before crossing the street.
“She was looking both ways on a one-way street,” said brother Chrissie Richardson-Cliffe. “Everything she did was right, and everything this man did was wrong.”
Police arrested Spencer in February 2023 and initially charged him with assault, reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in injury.
“He reversed as fast as he could and hit her, got out of the car, saw what he had done and drove away – in my opinion, whether he was in the car or not, he was still a dangerous person,” Richardson-Cliff told reporters. News Wednesday.
After the accident, Liebenberg was no longer able to speak, communicate or walk without help. Her family moved her from one facility that specialized in treating brain injuries to another in hopes of a breakthrough.
She underwent three consecutive brain surgeries and died in December at the age of 38.
“Her last day, my mom and I were with her, and she passed away peacefully,” Richardson-Cliff said. “This is the first time I’ve felt peaceful in 500 days.”
In light of Liebenberg’s death, police re-arrested Spencer, 31, and charged him with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment and failure to exercise due care.
“It doesn’t change the fact that my sister died three days after Christmas after she was hit by this car and had three consecutive brain surgeries,” Richardson-Cliffe said of the upgraded charges. “Whatever. No amount of sentencing can change the outcome, it can’t bring my sister back, and it can’t change the pain my family has endured.”
Records show Spencer was free on $10,000 cash bail or $20,000 bond following his arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Richardson-Cliff previously told The News that Liebenberg grew up in a small town in North Carolina and was working her “dream job” as an architect before the accident.
“Even if this guy, of course, would never have a driver’s license again, would that make the community safer?” Richardson-Cliffe asked Wednesday. “To me, seeing what he did and then driving off and leaving her behind is a completely different crime than accidentally driving into someone.”
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