By Gina Martinez
At about 4:19 a.m. Oakland Gardens resident Michael Fabre, 25, was driving a 2010 Infinity with four passengers traveling eastbound on the LIE at a high rate of speed when it struck a divider near the Maurice Avenue exit, according to police. The Infinity then hit another vehicle with one driver, police said.
The collision set off a chain-reaction crash that left three people dead and nine injured, police said.
Fabre and two rear passengers, Giovanny Sanchez, 24, of Brentwood and Christina Formato, 24, of Franklin Square, were pronounced dead at the scene. The other two passengers were injured. One was one in critical condition, the other in stable condition, police said.
Fabre, the driver of the Infinity, was a sergeant in the National Guard. He attended John Jay College and was working toward becoming New York City Corrections officer. He was stationed as a guard at JFK Airport and Penn Station. He lived with his mother in Oakland Gardens and loved playing baseball and basketball. The passenger in the second vehicle suffered minor injuries and refused medical attention, according to police
Fabre’s family and friends gathered outside their home Wednesday afternoon grieving and remembering the 25-year-old. They said he was on his way back home from a party in Manhattan prior to the crash.
Fabre was engaged to his 22-year- old fiancee, Bianca Sagliocca. The pair dated for four years and planned on starting a family eventually.
“He’s a wonderful guy, he loved everyone,” she said. ‘He always made sure to help everybody out, always dropped everything to help others. I loved him a lot. He was everything to me. He was just a good-hearted person who loved his family.”
Shortly after the two cars collided, a dump truck approaching the crash scene swerved and plowed into four vehicles, injuring six passengers. The pileup occurred on the eastbound lanes on the lower level of the LIE near Maurice Avenue, a walled-in section of the highway that feeds traffic off the BQE into the LIE, authorities said.
The injured passengers were taken to Elmhurst Hospital and Queens Hospital Center, authorities said.
There have been no arrests and investigations were ongoing, police said.
Lanes were reopened at 8:30 a.m.
According to his family, Sanchez, who also died in the wreck, was a close friend. Sanchez was a corporal in the Army.
Bill Nagle, Fabre’s father figure, dated Fabre’s mother on and off for 20 years. He had watched Fabre grow up since he was 3 years old.
“He loved serving his country, he worked guarding Penn Station and JFK,” he said outside the Oakland Gardens two-family home where an American flag flew at half mast. “It’s just a terrible thing, he was the love of his mother’s life. I mean, I used to tell her ‘leave him alone, you don’t have to call him everyday, give him some space!”
Nagle went on to say: “He was meticulous. The Army made him like that. He was precise, very disciplined.”
Melissa Boncimino, a family friend, remembered Fabre fondly.
“It’s a tragedy, it’s very hard to believe,” she said. “The good die young, you know? He was a good kid, he was always happy, I used to always speak to him and he was a very positive kid. Had a lot of goals in life. We were having a party this weekend and that’s when I was planning on seeing him again. This is just shocking. He was an only child and he had a girlfriend for a few years, he was eventually going to get married and have a few kids.”
Reach Gina Martinez by e-mail at gmart
