A drunken driver who fatally mowed down 4 individuals at a Manhattan July 4 celebration would have saved driving if not for the our bodies jammed underneath his automotive, prosecutors mentioned Monday.
A boozed-up Daniel Christopher Hyden, 44, was kicked out of a neighborhood watering gap shortly earlier than he received 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 Legal professional Matthew Bogdanos mentioned in a chilling opening assertion on the suspect’s non-jury trial.
“When he hits 11 individuals, he’s nonetheless revving the engine,” Bogdanos mentioned. “The one cause the automotive 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 individuals and injuring one other seven within the horror, authorities mentioned.
He allegedly had a blood-alcohol content material of as much as .17 — greater than twice the authorized restrict, officers mentioned.
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 individual’s loss of life would happen from his driving whereas intoxicated.’’
The drunken wreck killed Emily Ruiz, 30, Herman Pinkney, 38, Ana Morel, 43, and Lucille Pinkney, 59, all of whom had been celebrating the patriotic vacation at Corlears Hook Park.
In a single notably heartbreaking element, Ruiz’s younger son introduced his toy first support equipment to the hospital “to assist the medical doctors deal with his mother’s deadly accidents,’’ Bogdanos revealed.
Hyden’s lawyer, Theodore Herlich, questioned his consumer’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 might have performed a job in why the brakes weren’t pressed more durable.”
