A drunken driver who fatally mowed down 4 folks at a Manhattan July 4 celebration would have saved driving if not for the our bodies jammed below his automobile, prosecutors stated Monday.
A boozed-up Daniel Christopher Hyden, 44, was kicked out of a neighborhood watering gap shortly earlier than he bought behind the wheel of his Ford F-150 and crashed by a fence at a Decrease East Facet park, plowing into a celebration there, Assistant District Lawyer Matthew Bogdanos stated in a chilling opening assertion on the suspect’s non-jury trial.
“When he hits 11 folks, he’s nonetheless revving the engine,” Bogdanos stated. “The one motive the automobile stops, horrifically, is as a result of it’s on human beings.
“Human beings are stopping the tires from touching the bottom.”
Hyden plowed into the group going 52 mph, killing the 4 folks and injuring one other seven within the horror, authorities stated.
He allegedly had a blood-alcohol content material of as much as .17 — greater than twice the authorized restrict, officers stated.
Bogdanos indicated that the prosecution plans to make use of Hyden’s personal phrases towards him at trial, citing passages throughout opening statements from the suspect’s autobiography, “The Sober Addict,” which particulars his rock-bottom struggles with substance abuse.
“’An actual hazard to others, my bike and myself after I was on the street intoxicated,’” Hyden wrote in a passage that Bogdanos quoted throughout his opening.
The prosecutor added of Hyden, “He was conscious of and consciously ignored the danger — that one other particular person’s loss of life would happen from his driving whereas intoxicated.’’
The drunken wreck killed Emily Ruiz, 30, Hermann Pinkney, 38, Ana Morel, 43, and Lucille Pinkney, 59, all of whom have been celebrating the patriotic vacation at Corlears Hook Park.
In a single notably heartbreaking element, Ruiz’s younger son introduced his toy first help package to the hospital “to assist the docs deal with his mother’s deadly accidents,’’ Bogdanos revealed.
Hyden’s lawyer, Theodore Herlich, questioned his shopper’s blood-alcohol stage — and contended he was hampered by a foot he injured in a combat on the membership earlier than the crash, “which may have performed a task in why the brakes weren’t pressed tougher.”
