Girl, mom killed in Brewster crash
By Kathy Moore and Hoa Nguyen • kjmoore@lohud.com • June 9, 2009
BREWSTER - A drunken driver struck and killed a mother and her young daughter as they were walking to the child's dance class yesterday, authorities said.
Kayla Donohue, a second-grader at John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Southeast, was pronounced dead at the scene about 6:45 p.m., Brewster fire officials said.
Her mother, Lori Donohue, was taken by Brewster ambulance to Putnam Hospital Center and then by helicopter to Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, where she reportedly died later in the evening.
A white Ford F-350 pickup truck apparently failed to make the left-hand turn onto routes 6 and 22 from Main Street in the village and drove into the parking lot next to Seven Stars School of Performing Arts, pinning the little girl against the building and her mother beneath the truck.
The pickup's driver was taken into custody and arraigned early this morning on a felony charge of first-degree vehicluar manslaughter. The suspect was identified this morning by a Putnam County corrections official as Zacariah Conses-Garcia, 35. His address was not immediately available. Conses-Garcia was being held on $150,000 bail.
The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement department has also filed a detainer against the suspect as an illegal immigrant, the Putnam County corrections department said. Further details were not available.
Police released few details on the accident last night. But bystanders and friends of the Donohue family were able to provide more information about the tragedy.
Southeast Councilman Dwight Yee, whose daughter was in a Seven Stars dance class at the time, said he arrived on the scene quickly enough to see the driver of the truck sitting in the back of a police cruiser. Yee said state troopers told him the driver registered a 0.19 percent blood-alcohol level on a breath-based test, more than twice the legal threshold for driving while intoxicated.
"The community is very upset," said Yee, a former New York City police lieutenant. "A DWI at 6:30 in the evening."
Several bystanders, along with the teachers at the popular dance school, tried to calm other students inside, who were crying and frightened after the violent crash.
Jillian Bierce, 24, who lives nearby, said she heard tires screeching and a loud crash, and saw a woman lying underneath the truck. She ran inside the dance school to comfort the children.
"The teachers were devastated," she said.
Santos Argueta, 29, who works at Norm's, a bar and restaurant across the street, said he also heard tires screeching and a horn blaring. "The tires were going crazy," said Argueta, who was visibly shaken by the crash two hours later.
Debbie Wood, another Norm's employee, also saw the aftermath.
"If it did that damage to the building, you know what it did to the person," she said, referring the the splintered facade.
Yee said local police knew the driver, a village resident, familiar to them because of his large truck with Florida license plates.
Omeka Krongelb, a Sherman, Conn., resident who teaches hip-hop at Seven Stars, was approaching the dance studio when she found out what happened. Krongelb's teenage daughter also takes classes there.
"My daughter is 14, but she wouldn't have survived that either," Krongelb said, looking at the massive truck and the impact that crushed wooden shingles on the building. "It's so awful. I'm just heartbroken."
Yee said parents never let their daughters walk back and forth to the studio entrance by themselves because the traffic at routes 6 and 22 and Main Street is so busy and the paved area between the building, which also houses Stark Communication, and the road so narrow.
"Everyone does the same thing. We all walk along the building with our daughters who are running along laughing in their leotards," Yee said.
Bob Donohue, the father, was coaching a softball game at JFK school when he was notified of the crash and fled the field, parents said. Word spread quickly by cell phone and text messages that there had been a terrible accident at Seven Stars and distraught parents converged on the school to pick up their shaken children.
Yee noted that it is the second tragedy to hit Brewster within weeks. Richard Grasso, a retired New York City police officer known throughout the community for coaching and supporting his children's sporting and musical theater activities, was killed in a head-on collision on Route 22 on May 7. Yee said his daughter is in the same class as Grasso's daughter at C.V. Starr Intermediate School.
"How can I explain this to my daughter?" he said. "First Grasso (was killed) and now this."
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This is not too far from me. I cant tell you how pissed off people are at this garbage. The cops knew of this guy!
Illegal aliens are dirty rotten animals and need to be deported immediately.
How many deaths is too many???
