
LinkedIn Photo
Yusuf GĂźrsey, who lived on Whalley Avenue and did not have a car.
Seventy-year-old scholar and city peace commission member Yusuf GĂźrsey died Sunday night after a car fatally struck himâââand then fled the sceneâââwhile he was walking near his home on Whalley Avenue.
New Haven Police Department Public Information Officer Christian Bruckhart announced GĂźrseyâs death in a Monday press release.
Bruckhart wrote that, at 9:26 p.m. Sunday night, officers responded to the area of Whalley Avenue and Brownell Street for a car accident involving a pedestrian. They found GĂźrsey in the street, injured.
An ambulance transported GĂźrsey to Yale-New Haven Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
The Crash Reconstruction Team responded to the scene. The car, which had fled after the accident, was found later and is being processed for evidence. Police ask that anyone who may have witnessed this incident or who may have information valuable to investigators to call detectives at 203âââ946-6304 or through the departmentâs anonymous tip-line at 866âââ888-TIPS (8477).
GĂźrsey was originally from Istanbul, Turkey. He had lived in New Haven for almost 40 years and had studied both engineering and linguistics. He was an academic who spent his life at times as a researcher, a professor, and a freelance medical and court translator. He spoke both Turkish and Arabic.
GĂźrsey served on the Greater New Haven Peace Council as well as the cityâs Peace Commission.
Fellow city peace commissioner Aaron Goode fondly reflected on the years he spent working with GĂźrsey. He described GĂźrsey as someone who wanted peace in the Middle East: he advocated for nuclear nonproliferation, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now, ending the war in Gaza.
âItâs very shocking,â said Goode, who said he knew that GĂźrsey had attended yesterdayâs downtown protest in support of Palestine. GĂźrsey was passionate about ending the conflict involving Israel and Gaza, and according to fellow peace commissioner Millie Grenough, he attended every one of the commissionâs community conversations around the conflict, the most recent one being just two weeks ago at the Mitchell Library in Westville.
âHe was a very learned person,â Goode said of GĂźrsey, especially when it came to Middle East history. He had an ââencyclopedic knowledgeâ of history, geography, and theology. GĂźrsey brought his scholarly natureâââhe often posted on social media for the birthdays of Turkish writers and thinkersâââto everything he did, including the peace commission.
âHe wasnât loud and assertive and ebullient,â Goode remembered, ââhe was just a very quiet, scholarly, intellectual, thoughtful presence in whatever setting he was in.â
Goode had often worried about him. He characterized the stretch of Whalley Avenue on which GĂźrsey lived as dangerous for pedestrians and said he didnât own a car, which meant he frequently walked from downtown, often at night, in order to get home.