LINDEN, N.J. (AP) — A car carrying three off-duty New Jersey police officers who had just left a strip club traveled the wrong way down a New York City highway and crashed head-on into a tractor-trailer early Friday, killing an officer and a civilian and critically injuring two other policemen.
The dead were identified as two 28-year-old men, one a Linden police officer and the other a civilian, officials said. Both were passengers in the car. The 27-year-old driver and a 23-year-old passenger, also Linden police officers, were listed in critical condition at hospitals on Staten Island, authorities said. The truck driver suffered injuries that weren’t believed to be life-threatening.
New York Police Department spokeswoman Deputy Chief Kim Royster said one tractor-trailer swerved out of the way of the car on the West Shore Expressway on Staten Island, but a second didn’t have enough time to veer away before the crash. She said the driver of the tractor-trailer passed a breathalyzer test and does not appear to be at fault.
Royster said police are going to review video footage and interview patrons and employees of Curves strip club.
“It appears they may have been coming from some kind of party,” she said. “At this point there is no indication of alcohol in the car. …There was no smell of alcohol.”
She said the car’s black box will help investigators determine how fast they were traveling.
Images of the crash scene show the truck and car smashed against the center guardrail and the car ravaged.
“Linden is a very small town. Everybody knows everybody,” Linden Mayor Derek Armstead told told WCBS radio. “The officers involved are very proactive in our community, and it is just a sad day in Linden, it really is.”
Linden police Capt. James Sarnicki said all three officers were relatively new to the force. The officers’ names weren’t being released until their families could be notified.
He said that Armstead and police Chief James Schulhafer were heading to the two Staten Island hospitals where the surviving officers were taken and that a chaplain and grief counselors are at police headquarters.
In his 37 years working for the department, Sarnicki said, he couldn’t remember any officers being killed in the blue-collar refinery town just across the water from Staten Island.
“People are in a somber mood. I could see some officers with tears in their eyes. It is an emotional day for all of us. Like I said, we are a family and we’re all hurt by this,” he said. “It’s tragic for people to lose their lives at such an early age, whatever the reason.”
Flags in front of Linden City Hall, which are part of a war memorial surrounded by smaller American flags, were lowered to half-staff Friday morning.
“This is devastating, devastating,” said Reese Lospinoso, 57, a bartender who grew up in Linden and has lived here most of his life. “The police in Linden are looked at very, very highly. They’re very well-respected in our town.”
Armstead said more information would be released later Friday.
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Pearson reported from New York. Associated Press writers Kiley Armstrong and Ula Ilnytzky contributed to this story from New York.
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