A woman was killed and her husband injured in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon when a minivan reversed into them and then sped away, a Police Department spokesman said.

The crash occurred around 2:40 p.m. on West 40th Street, west of the intersection with Fifth Avenue, next to Bryant Park, when the driver of a Toyota Sienna minivan facing eastbound put the vehicle in reverse and struck the two pedestrians, the police said. The woman, 50, was crushed between the minivan and a box truck. She died at the scene, the police said.

Her husband, who is 55, was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition, the police said. The driver, a 40-year-old man, was apprehended nearby a short time later, according to the police, who said the investigation was continuing. The names of the victims have not been released.

Witnesses at the scene said they heard screaming and then saw a woman lying on the ground. Lorna Weiner, a Manhattan resident who walked by the intersection after the crash, said she was shaken by what she had seen.

“They were just in a whole pool of blood,” Ms. Weiner said.

Rosa Paredes was working in an ice cream truck feet away from where the accident happened, right outside the flagship branch of the New York Public Library. She saw the minivan back into the couple as the truck approached from behind, she said, and then watched the van speed away.

“I was crying, crying, crying,” said Ms. Paredes, 38, who lives in Queens. “I was in shock.”

The block of West 40th Street beside the New York Public Library’s main branch, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, was closed to traffic for several hours on Wednesday afternoon as passers-by and TV news reporters looked on. Blood was visible on the ground in front of a white box truck, which was cordoned off by a barrier erected by the Police Department’s collision investigation squad. Personnel from the city’s medical examiner office were on the scene.