LI Cop Almost Died After Strike By DWI Crash Driver: Police

YAPHANK, NY — In what one police official called a disturbing incident, a Long Island officer needed emergency surgery to save him from a brain hemorrhage after he was struck by an alleged drunken driver while directing traffic early Wednesday.

The officer was struck at about midnight in a chain reaction crash as he was “handling traffic control,” Suffolk police said.

His marked police vehicle was parked in the roadway blocking traffic due to an earlier investigation at the intersection of William Floyd Parkway and Yaphank Woods Boulevard in Yaphank, police said, adding the officer was in the roadway and a 1999 Chevrolet pickup truck traveling southbound on the parkway struck the rear of a GMC Yukon, then the police vehicle.

The “force of the impact” caused the Yukon to strike the officer, police said.

Acting Police Commissioner Stuart Cameron said the county “narrowly avoided a tragedy.”

“We came very close to losing the life of one of our members,” he told reporters at a news conference at police headquarters in Yaphank Wednesday afternoon. “It’s happened before, and far too often, and the events of last night really highlight again to me a thing that I know very well, law enforcement is a very dangerous profession.”

He said that the reason why the officer is still alive has to do with not only a collaborative effort to save his life, but also luck.

The Ridge Fire Department worked collaboratively with a paramedic from the department’s Medical Crisis Action Team at the scene and then he was airlifted by the police medevac to Stony Brook University Hospital, where the department’s trauma surgeon is located.

“Those powerful resources are what I believe saved our officer from potentially dying last night,” he said.

The officer’s name is being withheld by police officials but they did say he is a 35-year-old father, has been on the force for three years, and is assigned to patrol the 7th Precinct in Shirley. An online fundraiser for the officer and his family has raised more than $33,000 of a $40,000 goal.

Cameron described it as disturbing to see the officer who was in “extreme pain” and the trauma it caused his family.

“You can say that what he was doing was routine, but police work is never routine,” he said. “There is an element of danger to every single thing that we do.”

He said that he would like the officer, who is now sedated and on a ventilator, to have the opportunity to speak with his young children so that they “can be reassured that he is going to be fine.”

Cameron said that the department expects he will recover and will be able to return to work. The officer’s work has been commended and he has been doing “a phenomenal job,” and is “a great asset” to the county, he said.

The officer had been placing a flare on the roadway when the pickup truck slammed into the Yukon and it spun around, striking him and he ended up underneath the vehicle.

Dr. James Vosswinkel, the department’s medical director and chief of trauma surgery at Stony Brook, said the county almost “lost one of its defenders.” The officer is in the Intensive Care Unit where he is being monitored “minute-to-minute,” he said.

“We are all very optimistic of the outcome that he will recover,” he added.

The pickup’s driver, William Petersohn, 38, of Mastic, was also transported to Stony Brook in “serious condition,” police said, adding that the Yukon’s driver was not injured in the crash, police said.

Major Case Unit detectives charged Petersohn with driving while intoxicated and he will be arraigned at a later date, according to police.