By Jeff Lipton
Police said the investigation is continuing, but the crash appears to have been an accident.
The driver, identified as Sidney Weinstein of Valley Lane West, was double-parked inside his dark blue van at a bus stop on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan at 5 p.m. when a police officer ordered him to move, police said.
Police said the request may have caused panic in Weinstein, who abruptly took off across Sixth Avenue and 34th Street, barreling into pedestrians, many of them holiday shoppers, and pinning some against a Queens bus. Cops were investigating whether his gas pedal got stuck.
The accident was called the deadliest in a decade in the city.
The dead were tentatively identified as G. Gregory Gehring, 67, of Baldwin; Steven Kunin, 15, of Brooklyn; Xiu-Ying Chen, 38, of Manhattan; Harsharn Singh, 31, of Jersey City; Sumejh Shara and a 35-year-old woman whose name was not released. Kim Young, 60, of Queens died of her injuries at St. Vincent
