A 9-year-old boy was killed after his mother, who may have been under the influence, drove the wrong way on Long Island’s Southern State Parkway and crashed head-on with another vehicle, police said.
The brutal collision occurred in the highway’s eastbound lanes, near exit 42 in Islip on Thursday around 2:20 a.m. It involved four cars in total, and they all suffered “extensive” damage, New York State Police Major Stephen J. Udice said during a news conference.
“To give you an idea of the severity of the impact, the engine of the wrong-way driver vehicle was thrown from that vehicle into the woods,” he added, “some distance from the collision point.”
A Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office patrol officer spotted the wrong-way driver “well prior to that collision” and tried to initiate a traffic stop, Udice told reporters. Instead, she sped up and attempted to flee — only to slam into another vehicle some ways down the highway.
The driver’s son, a 9-year-old boy, was sitting in the back, behind the passenger seat, when the collision occurred. First responders pulled him from the wreck and administered life-saving measures, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. The child was pronounced dead in the ambulance while en route to the hospital.
“The state troopers did their best to save the boy’s life and this was a traumatic experience for all involved,” Udice said.
The child’s mother, a 32-year-old Centerport resident, was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip with non-life-threatening injuries. Authorities suspect she’d been driving in the wrong direction for some time before the deadly crash, as far back as the Sunrise Highway.
She was given a field sobriety test at the scene, though police have so far declined to release the results. She has not been identified.
“Yes, she was given some field sobriety tests. I’m not going to get into the results of those yet,” Udice said. “What I can tell you is that she has not been charged, but that doesn’t mean that she won’t be charged.”
Three other drivers were hospitalized with what appear to be non-life threatening injuries, police said. There were no passengers in their cars.
