Three residents of the same Jackson Heights home and a man from LeFrak City in Corona were among the five people killed in the New Year’s Day crash on the Cross Island Parkway in Whitestone, according to the NYPD. The fifth victim was from North Carolina.
The driver of one of the two vehicles involved in the crash, 24-year-old Kazeem Ramsahai of Raeford, North Carolina, was killed along with his four Queens passengers just before 6 a.m. near the exit to the Whitestone Expressway, which is known locally as “dead man’s curve,” when the vehicle collided with a second car.
Three of the victims lived in the same house on 82nd Street, a block north of Northern Boulevard. Mario Campo, 30, Dayanara Benitez-Campo, 19, and Salma Garcia-Diaz, 23, all lived at the same home in Jackson Heights. An NYPD spokeswoman did not know whether the Campos were related.
Jordy Betances, 20, of the Horace Harding Expressway in LeFrak City, was identified as the fourth passenger who was killed in the fatal collision.
Police from the 109th Precinct in Flushing responded to a 911 call of a vehicle collision on the northbound Cross Island Expressway near the exit to the Whitestone Expressway southbound ramp in Whitestone, at about 5:52 a.m.
A preliminary investigation determined that Ramsahai was behind the wheel of a Mazda traveling at a high rate of speed when he collided with a Honda causing the Mazda to flip, trapping the five occupants inside.
First responders pulled the injured 63-year-old Honda driver from his vehicle and rushed him to New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital where he was listed in critical but stable condition while all five victims in the Mazda were pronounced dead at the scene, police reported.
There have been no arrests, and the investigation remains ongoing, according to the NYPD.