Wrong-way crash: NYPD officer's family members 'want to know why'

UPDATE: Witness says driver made U-turn before wrong-way crash

RAMAPO – Tuesday's double fatal head-on crash on the state Thruway has police and family members perplexed about why a New York City police officer reportedly drove the wrong way and slammed into another vehicle driven by a Newburgh chef who only months earlier had lost his wife to cancer.

"I want to know why," Joan Christopher, the distraught stepmother of the officer, Richard E. Christopher, said Tuesday at the family home in Nyack.

Christopher, 32, an Army veteran who served in the Middle East and Bosnia before joining the NYPD eight years ago, reportedly was on his way to work when his 2002 Dodge Dakota pickup wound up traveling south in the northbound lanes, colliding head-on in the center lane with a 2003 Honda CRV driven by James B. DeVito, 59, of Airmont.

Both drivers, the sole occupants of their vehicles, were pronounced dead at the scene. Officials said an autopsy and drug and alcohol tests are planned.

The Thruway Authority received a call reporting a blue pickup truck heading the wrong way moments before the crash was reported around 7 a.m. near Exit 15 in Suffern. Officials offered little additional information on the crash Tuesday, saying accident reconstruction investigators were still looking into the incident.

DeVito, a recent widower, was a chef at Mount St. Mary College in Newburgh and was known to his Airmont neighbors as a quiet and friendly man.

"I saw him yesterday," said Alyssa Dubbs, 20, who lives across the street on Mary Beth Drive. "He was outside taking care of his lawn, working on his pool, the flowers in his front yard."

"He was a great guy," added Dubbs. "Nice as could be."

Neighbors said DeVito had three adult stepchildren and a number of grandchildren on whom he doted. His wife, Wilma, died in February after a battle with cancer.

Christopher, who lived with his girlfriend and her child on South Airmont Road, had been involved in prior motor vehicle incidents, including as a passenger in a 2010 drunken-driving crash with an Orangetown police cruiser that injured two officers. Christopher suffered minor injuries while the drunken driver in that crash, Bernard Bohunicky of West Nyack — who had been convicted three times of driving while intoxicated — served three years in prison, according to state records.

Family members said they were stunned to hear Christopher was accused of driving the wrong way and suggested he might have been misdirected by construction personnel. But there was no indication that was the case.

Police said they were continuing to investigate where Christopher was traveling to and from and where he got on the Thruway in the wrong direction.

Joan Christopher said she felt numb after learning of his death.

"Nobody can replace him because he was something special," she said.

He was a godfather to his sister's daughter, who is deaf, and learned sign language to communicate with her, his family said.

Tuesday's crash was the third wrong-way incident in the area in the past month, and comes weeks after the five-year anniversary of one of the most horrific car crashes in recent memory. On July 26, 2009, Diane Schuler was drunk and high when she drove a minivan in the wrong direction on the Taconic State Parkway in Mount Pleasant. She slammed head-on into another vehicle, killing eight people, including four children.

An estimated 360 people each year are killed in wrong-way collisions on the nation's highways, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Some 60 percent of those crashes involve alcohol and nearly 80 percent occur between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. Wrong-way crashes on highways are relatively rare, but are often fatal because they usually involve head-on collisions.

The speed limit on that stretch of the Thruway is 65 mph. Thruway officials said they were monitoring the investigation to determine whether safety measures could be improved.

"We believe that area of the Thruway is clearly marked," Thruway Authority Executive Director Thomas Madison said at a news conference. "The wrong-way aspect of this accident is something we take very seriously."

Anyone with information on Tuesday's crash should call state police at 845-364-0200.

Staff writers Jane Lerner, Thane Grauel and Alex Taylor contributed to this report.

Recent wrong-way crashes:

• On July 15, David A. Gray, a 63-year-old from Connecticut, drove the wrong way on Interstate 684 before being stopped by state police in North Salem. He is facing a host of felony charges, including DWI.

• On July 16, Bronx resident Francisco Herrera, 30, was charged with DWI after he drove the wrong way on the Saw Mill River Parkway and caused a head-on crash.

• On July 23, 2013, Thiells resident Michael Schechel, 69, drove south in the northbound lanes of the Tappan Zee Bridge, causing a five-vehicle crash that killed Hannah Ayeh-Brachie, 56, of Hillcrest. In March he was charged with criminally negligent homicide.

• On Aug. 10, 2013, Michelle Cio, 34, was killed when she drove the wrong way on the northbound Taconic State Parkway in Yorktown and slammed into another car. Police said the Ossining woman's blood-alcohol level was four times the legal limit.