Northbridge native struck and killed by truck in New York City

By Jaclyn Reiss, Globe Correspondent

A man from Northbridge was struck and killed by a commercial truck early this morning as he was walking in New York City, authorities.

Ken Baker, 26, was walking near the intersection of 6th Avenue and West 47th Street in Manhattan just before 4 a.m. when he was hit by the truck, a New York Police Department spokeswoman said.

Baker was transported to Bellevue Hospital in New York, where he was pronounced dead.

The truck driver remained on the scene and is not facing charges.

Donna McKenzie, a relative of Baker’s, said his parents still live in Northbridge.

“He was a wonderful young man, and was always at every family Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner,” McKenzie said.

Baker and his girlfriend were coming back from a charity concert in Central Park headlined by Neil Young, Foo Fighters and The Black Keys, McKenzie said.

McKenzie said Baker was named after an uncle he never met, also named Ken, who died in a motor vehicle accident while he was a student at Tufts University.

Baker was attending graduate school at Binghamton University, a State University of New York school, McKenzie said. He had attended college at University of Massachusetts at Amherst before transferring to Elmira College in upstate New York for his undergraduate degree, she said.