A 27-year-old Brooklyn man was arrested and charged with manslaughter, DWAI and speeding, among other charges, after he crashed his Honda Civic into a tractor-trailer early Wednesday morning. His girlfriend, who was in the front passenger seat, was killed in the collision.
According to the NYPD, Elroy Perez was driving north on Vandervoort Avenue in Williamsburg just before 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday when he crashed into the passenger side of a tractor-trailer that was pulling out of a commercial parking lot near the corner of Withers Street. The tractor driver was not injured, and remained on the scene. Perez's Honda became wedged under the truck's bed.
Perez suffered only minor injuries, but his passenger and longtime girlfriend, 26-year-old Diana Lemache, suffered fatal head trauma. EMS responders transported her unconscious and unresponsive to Woodhull Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The News reports that Perez had a blood-alcohol level of .07% at the time of the crash, which is high enough for a DWAI charge. He is being held on $50,000 bail following his Wednesday night arraignment. Speed is believed to have been a factor in the crash. According to the tabloid, the couple was driving home from a work party.
"It's a foggy morning. The truck was pulling out onto Vandervoort when that car came tearing down," a warehouse worker who witnessed the crash told the Post.
Other charges against Perez include operating a motor vehicle while impaired by drugs—reportedly marijuana—and criminally negligent homicide.
Perez and Lemache reportedly have a four-year-old daughter named Eliana.
"She was supposed to go out Christmas shopping for her daughter today," Perez's mother, Gina, told the News. "We're not in the mood to celebrate Christmas right now."
Lemache's father Lenin wrote on Facebook, "With my deepest sorrow and with all the pain of the world I am saddened to announce the death of my daughter... we feel... the deepest pain that as parents we can feel."
