Eight friends, two cars, and one fatality. Early yesterday morning, friends, piled into a Chevrolet Blazer and a Honda Civic, were crashed at "dead man's curve" on the Cross Island Parkway. A 19-year-old passenger was killed while the others were injured, two critically.
The drivers of the two vehicles were charged: 18-year-old Bolivar Camacho, driving the Civic, and 20-year-old Milton Flores, in the Blazer, were charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and vehicular assault; Flores was also charged with DWI.
The Daily News called Camacho's and Flores' driving a "drunken game of cat and mouse" and even created a graphic to show the route of the crash. Apparently Flores, whose Blazer had five other people in it, and Camacho, who had 1 other passengers, started "jockeying with each other as they gained speed" after getting on the Cross Island. At the curve near the Whitestone, the cars collided and the Blazer flipped over a number of times. John Reyes, who was in the Blazer, was killed and many of the passengers were thrown out of the car. Henry Hernandez, who was in one of the cars, told the News, "The next thing I know I'm in a car upside down."
A passenger in Comacho's Civic, Jonathan Garcia, told Newsday that the friends, who had been hanging out near Fort Totten, only had "two little cups" of Bacardi rum: "It wasn't enough to get drunk drunk." Amy Koo, 16, whose father is an NYPD sergeant, was critically injured with severe back injuries and a fractured skull, and Eider Valencia, 23, was paralyzed with spinal injuries.
