A twelve-year-old boy was recently killed as he bounced his ball outside his Brooklyn home. According to Streetsblog.com, Samuel Cohen-Eckstein was hit by a van as he ran into the street to retrieve his ball. In an odd twist of fate, his parents had repeatedly spoken out about pedestrian safety issues in the area over the past few years.

The NYPD says an investigation into the fatal accident is ongoing. We do know Samuel was killed by a white van belonging to a design company from Queens. Apparently, as he was bouncing his ball outside his home at approximately 5:15 p.m., the ball got loose and he chased it into the street. That’s when he was hit, suffering trauma to his abdomen.

Samuel was transported to Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The 12-year-old was preparing to celebrate his bar mitzvah later in the month. His parents, Gary Eckstein and Amy Cohen, had spoken at community meetings in years past, discussing traffic safety issues in their Prospect Park West neighborhood.

At a meeting in 2011, his father mentioned that he liked to pick up his children from school on his tandem bicycle but that doing this wasn’t safe at one point in time.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2008, his mother said the city was improving their bicycle safety standards and that things were much safer than in years past.

Also in 2008, Eckstein was interviewed in an article by the NY Times, where he mentioned malfunctioning pedestrian signals. He said his children had noticed them in his Park Slope neighborhood.

By all accounts, no failed pedestrian signal was involved in this recent fatal accident. The area is the site of several previous citations for failures to yield. In the last month that data is available for, August, the local precinct reportedly issued four speeding tickets and 11 citations for failing to yield to pedestrians.

Eight children ages 12 and under have been killed on New York City streets in 2013. Three of these fatal accidents have occurred within the past month.