A Bay Terrace man turned himself in at the 111th Precinct in Bayside after a Queens grand jury indicted him in connection to a fatal hit-and-run crash on the Whitestone Expressway that killed an MTA supervisor from Jackson Heights in February 2024.
James Vennitti, 63, of Darren Drive, surrendered on Feb. 4 and was arraigned that afternoon in Queens Supreme Court on the indictment charging him with leaving the scene of an incident without reporting and driving a motor vehicle without a license.
Vennitti was allegedly behind the wheel of a 2014 Mercedes Benz SUV traveling northbound on the Whitestone Expressway on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 10, when he was involved in a multi-vehicle collision near Linden Place in Flushing.
MTA employee David Berney, 43, was heading to work in his 2012 Scion iQ subcompact car northbound on the Whitestone Expressway at around 6:20 a.m. when he was rammed from behind by the 28-year old driver of a 2004 Toyota Rav4 SUV. The NYPD Highway District’s Collision Investigation Squad determined that following the fender bender, Berney and the other man got out of their vehicles in the center lane of the Whitestone Expressway to assess the damage to their cars when Vennitti’s SUV crashed into the Toyota Scion knocking the two men to the pavement.
Vennitti allegedly sped away from the scene, ditched his damaged Mercedes further north along the Whitestone Expressway, and ran off in an unknown direction.
Police from the 109th Precinct in Flushing responded to a 911 call of a multi-vehicle collision at the location, where they found Berney unconscious and unresponsive, lying on the roadway along with the other injured man. EMS arrived and pronounced Berney dead at the scene. The other driver was to New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.
Berney, who lived on 93rd Street with his wife and son, was a longtime MTA employee, where he worked as a track supervisor. He was planning his retirement when he was killed. The Queens District Attorney’s office secured the indictment charging Vennitti after detectives from the NYPD Highway District’s Collision
Investigation Squad identified him as the driver of the Mercedes Benz SUV. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Queens Supreme Court and was released on his own recognizance without bail after he was ordered to surrender his passport and not to drive as conditions of his release. Vennitti was also ordered to return to court on March 20.
