By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2026-09-30 05:26:55 | Updated at 2026-09-30 06:08:10
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A 72-year-old man who insisted he “did nothing wrong” when he fatally struck former Nickelodeon star Kianna Underwood as she crossed a Brooklyn street at the start of the year has been arrested for the alleged hit-and-run death several months later.
Michael Griffiths was cuffed Tuesday and charged with leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death and leaving the scene of an accident with injury, the NYPD said.
Griffiths’ arrest comes eight months after Underwood, 33, was plowed down by two vehicles in Brownsville around 6:50 a.m. on Jan. 16.
Surveillance footage obtained by The Post showed Underwood crossing against the light at Watkins Street and Pitkin Avenue when a Ford SUV crossed the double yellow line into the opposite lane to pass a stopped car ahead.
The SUV hit Underwood in the crosswalk, sending her flying across the intersection.
The former child star was then run over by a second black and gray sedan that dragged her “several hundred feet,” a police source told The Post at the time.
She was discovered with severe trauma at the intersection of Osborn Street and Pitkin Avenue, and was pronounced dead at the scene, cops and sources said.
Griffiths told the New York Daily News in late January he recalled hitting “something” when his 2021 black Ford Explorer struck Underwood — but insisted he “did nothing wrong.”
“At the time it was a little bit darkish. I was going to work…It felt like I hit something, and I pulled over and stopped,” he told the publication.
Griffiths told the paper he pulled over after he hit Underwood and “saw another car hit the person and started dragging the person.”
He said he then got out of the car and, with other bystanders, tried to flag down the second vehicle, which fled the scene.
Griffiths said he then left to take his medication and “felt like I was going to faint when the incident happened,” he told the Daily News.
The elderly driver told the outlet that police had impounded his car — which had been ticketed for 41 violations, including 25 for speeding, according to records.
Underwood, who appeared on the final season of the popular kids’ sketch comedy show “All That” in 2005, had been struggling with homelessness in recent years, becoming a frequent sight on the Brownsville streets where she died.
