A South Ozone Park man was indicted by a Queens grand jury for a fatal collision that killed a 67-year-old pedestrian from Long Island who was visiting with kin on Christmas Day 2019.
Ravinda Dharamjit, 26, of 124th Street, was arraigned in Queens Supreme Court on Friday morning on a seven-count indictment charging him with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, reckless driving and other related crimes after he was on the lam for nearly a half-decade in South America.
According to the charges, on the night of Dec. 25, 2019, Ainsley Dalrymple, a father of four from Hempstead who was visiting his son for a holiday gathering in South Ozone Park, was attempting to cross Rockaway Boulevard between 113th Street and 114th Street. Dharamjit was behind the wheel of a Toyota Tundra pickup truck, speeding down Rockaway Boulevard at 74 miles per hour, in a 25 mile an hour zone, when he struck Dalrymple, and sped away from the scene.
Police from the 106th Precinct in Ozone Park responded to a 911 call of a pedestrian struck on Rockaway Boulevard near 114th Street at 9:30 p.m. Officers found Dalrymple lying between two parked cars, unconscious and unresponsive with severe head and body trauma, police said.
EMS responded to the scene and rushed Dalrymple to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead a short while later.
Following the collision, Dharamjit allegedly drove through a steady red light at Rockaway Boulevard and Linden Boulevard, traveled on the wrong side of the road and fled the area. Dharamjit allegedly left the United States on Jan. 9, 2020, on a one-way ticket from JFK Airport to Guyana.
“The defendant is accused of driving 74 miles an hour — nearly three times the legal speed limit — when he struck and killed Ainsley Dalrymple,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “Rather than stop the vehicle and render aid, the defendant allegedly continued speeding through a busy intersection and later fled the country to Guyana.”
Katz’s Extraditions Unit worked closely with the U.S. Marshals to locate Dharamjit in Guyana. He was arrested by Guyana police and extradited to Miami this week. He was brought back to Queens and booked at the 106th Precinct on Thursday night and arraigned the following morning.
“My office and our police partners never give up on cases and today we arraigned this defendant, nearly five years after the fatal crash,” Katz said.
Dharamjit was also charged with leaving the scene of an incident without reporting, operating a vehicle at unreasonable speed and failing to obey passing safety markers.
Acting Queens Supreme Court Justice Danielle Harriman remanded Dharamjit into custody without bail and ordered him to return to court on Aug. 27. Dharamjit faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
