An off-duty NYPD Traffic Enforcement Agent was charged with driving under the influence after he crashed a car on the Williamsburg Bridge early Thursday morning, killing a 21-year-old female passenger, police said.
Amanda Miner, who was home in Williamsburg for spring break from college, was in the back seat of the 2013 Infinity four-door sedan when it crashed and split in half at about 3:15 a.m., police said. She was thrown from the vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene, they said.
The driver, Stefan Hoyte, 26, was traveling eastbound when he struck the median that divides the inner and outer lanes and then struck a support pillar, police said.
Hoyte, who blew a 0.103 blood alcohol level, had been suspended from his job three times, a law enforcement source said. The reason for those suspensions were not immediately clear.
Miner’s boyfriend, a 24-year-old fellow traffic agent, was sitting in the passenger seat at the time of the crash, the source said. He and Hoyte were taken to Bellevue Hospital Center with minor injuries, police said.
Hoyte was arrested and charged with vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, driving under the influence and speeding.
Miner, an anthropology and sociology student at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, was slated to graduate in 2018, according to an email sent by the school Thursday afternoon.
Miner “just radiated niceness; she had a great, winning personality,” Professor David Shulman, Miner’s adviser, said in the email, adding that she “spoke often, and had smart things to say. And she would speak her mind. If she had an opinion, she was going to offer it.”
In the spring of 2016, Miner traveled to New Orleans to help with Hurricane Katrina relief, she spent five semesters as a tutor for America Reads, and worked with teen mothers and homeless families living in shelters in her time at the school, according to the college.
