An off-duty NYPD detective driving home on the Palisades Interstate Parkway in Orange County was killed early Friday when his car veered off the road at an exit and struck a tree, according to officials and sources.
Detective Charles Cato, a 17-year veteran, appears to have lost control of his vehicle about 6:30 a.m. near Exit 19 close to Bear Mountain State Park, police sources said.
The vehicle veered onto the left shoulder of the exit ramp hitting a tree and causing the vehicle to erupt in flames, the sources said.
Medics took the gravely injured detective to Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh where he was pronounced dead at:6:55 a.m., the sources said.
“Detective Cato had been tirelessly working investigating shootings. He was brave and relentless. The public and the rest of the greatest detectives in the world will miss him,” said Scott Munro, president of the Detectives Endowment Association.
Cato was assigned since 2019 to the Force Investigation Division, which conducts exhaustive probes into police involved shootings, records show. He joined the NYPD in July 2007 and was promoted to detective 3rd grade in 2017.
The state police are investigating the crash, spokeswoman Jennifer Alvarez said, declining further comment.
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