Technology CEO Is Charged in Deadly Hit-and-Run
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The CEO of a successful technology firm is being criminally charged in a hit-and-run incident in Lower Manhattan last night that left a female pedestrian dead, police officials said.
George Anderson, the president and CEO of Enterprise Engineering, Inc., a company that provides technology services to several Fortune 500 corporations, was driving his black Mercedes Benz northbound on Water Street, between Hanover Square and Old Slip, when he struck 59-year-old Florence Cioffi at about 10:50 p.m., police said.
Mr. Anderson, 47, fled the scene after the incident but returned a short time later, police said. He refused a breathalyzer test, police sources said.
Cioffi, who was crossing to the west side of Water Street when she was hit, was rushed to Beekman Hospital, where doctors later pronounced her dead, police said.
Mr. Anderson is being charged with vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and leaving the scene of an accident, police said.
“This whole thing is a tragic accident,” a vice president at Enterprise Engineering, William Trapani, told The New York Daily News.
Cioffi had left a dinner with a group of friends when she was struck, her fiancé, William Mosca, told The New York Times. Mr. Mosca said Cioffi used to work for the insurance firm Frenkel & Company in the World Trade Center and was standing outside of the South Tower when it was attacked on the morning of September 11, 2001.
“She survived the trade center and she was run down like a dog in the street,” Mr. Mosca told the Times outside of the couple’s home in the Gerritsen Beach section of Brooklyn. “She usually would take a car service home from the restaurant. I don’t know what happened last night. Maybe she was going to find a yellow cab. I don’t know what happened.”
Clients of Mr. Anderson’s company include Merril Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, and UBS, according to the company’s Web site.
Mr. Anderson founded Enterprise with Elvira Anderson in 1995.
Police said that the last address they have for Mr. Anderson is 361 Dune Rd. in Westhampton, Long Island. However, Mr. Anderson and Elvira Anderson sold the home last year for $6.3 million after buying it for only $650,000 in 1999, records show.
Mr. Anderson will likely be arraigned this evening in Manhattan Criminal Court, officials said.
