Two men riding a moped in Elmhurst were killed by a driver whose vehicle burst into flames after crashing into two cars parked near Crowley Playground on Sunday morning.
The driver was last seen running from the scene of the crime only to double back and remove items from the back seat of the still burning wreckage, police said.
Police from the 110th Precinct in Elmhurst responded to a 911 call of a vehicle collision on 57th Avenue near 80th Street just north of the Long Island Expressway at just after 8:20 a.m. and found the two men lying on the roadway unconscious and unresponsive near the flaming vehicle.
The FDNY arrived on the scene to knock down the flames and EMS responded to the location and pronounced one of the men dead at the scene at 8:38 a.m. Paramedics performed CPR on the second man and rushed him to Elmhurst Hospital, where he was pronounced dead by hospital staff a short while later.
A preliminary investigation by the NYPD Highway District’s Collision Investigation Squad determined that the driver was behind the wheel of a silver Volkswagen Golf hatchback with Illinois license plates speeding westbound on 57th Avenue when he failed to navigate a curve in the road and crossed over the solid double yellow line into the eastbound lane of travel where he crashed into the moped head-on ejecting the two men onto the roadway, an NYPD spokeswoman said, adding that the moped became wedged in the front bumper of the Volkswagen. The vehicle then smashed into a parked and unoccupied white Mercedes-Benz SUV and continued westbound on 57th Avenue where it crashed into a gray Toyota Sienna minivan before coming to a stop.
The motorist jumped out and started to run away but came back to grab unknown property before running away in the direction of Elmhurst Park. There are no arrests and the identities of the deceased are being withheld pending proper family notification. The investigation by the NYPD Highway District’s Collision Investigation Squad remains ongoing.
