A woman is in critical condition and another is injured after an allegedly drunk and speeding driver crashed on a dangerous section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway early Saturday morning.
The driver, 25-year-old Rogelio Mendoza Hernandez of Corona, Queens, was heading east on the BQE at 4:48 a.m. on June 4, when he tried to exit the highway at Flushing Avenue in Williamsburg, but hit the divider at the off-ramp and careened into the outer wall of the ramp, according to police.
Mendoza Hernandez was going at a high rate of speed and “failed to negotiate the curve,” a Police Department spokesperson told amNewYork Metro.
His 22-year-old female passenger in the front seat suffered severe injuries to her torso and paramedics rushed her to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition, cops said.
Another woman of the same age sitting in the rear seat had cuts on her head and was also brought to the Manhattan medical facility but in stable condition, while the driver didn’t need medical attention.
Police arrested Mendoza Hernandez for assault, vehicular assault, drunk driving, and driving without a license.
That section of the BQE has a sharp bend and there have been dozens of crashes on the stretch of the highway alone in recent years.
Over the past 10 years, there were 147 crashes on that part of the road, injuring 217 people and killing two, according to data by the website NYC Crash Mapper.
A year ago, a tractor-trailer driver flipped over after speeding around the bend in the opposite direction, spilling his cargo of 100 gallons of diesel fuel onto the roadway.
The trucker didn’t have any serious injuries but cops arrested him for driving with a suspended license at the time.
