Joseph Beer - Fatal Car Accident that Killed Four Teens

A Queens teenager seemed dazed in October as he wandered through the aftermath of a deadly car crash that "looked like someone had taken a stick to a piñata," a state trooper testified Wednesday.

"There was debris everywhere. And body parts. Blood all over the place," said State Trooper Eduardo Arias.

Yet Arias said Joseph Beer, the driver of the car, kept asking, "Are my friends OK?"
Although Beer seemed confused when he asked about his friends, Arias said he was lucid when answering questions about his name, birth date and other facts.

When he brought Beer into an ambulance, the trooper said, he smelled marijuana.
"I asked him if he smoked weed prior to the incident," Arias told prosecutor Michael Bushwack. "He gave me a blank stare. Then I asked again and he said 'Yes.' "

Beer, who now faces aggravated vehicular manslaughter charges in the deaths of his four friends on the Southern State Parkway on Oct. 8, 2012.

Prosecutors have said Beer was high on marijuana and driving more than 110 mph when he lost control of his Subaru Impreza and slammed into trees off the parkway between exits 18 and 17 in Lakeview.
The force of the impact split the sedan in two and the passengers -- Darian Ramnarine, Christopher Khan and Peter Kanhai, all 18, and Neal Rajapa, 17, all from Queens -- were ejected. They were pronounced dead at the scene.

Beer, 18, of South Richmond Hill, Queens, wasn't seriously hurt. He is being held without bail. If convicted of the top charge against him, he will face up to 25 years in prison.

At one point, Greenberg showed Beer photos of the accident scene. The teen slumped over as he looked at them, his hand on his forehead.

Carbon Monoxide Injures 9 at Roosevelt Field Mall

Nine people were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning that was possible caused by a construction worker using an improperly vented propane-powered tool at Roosevelt Field Mall.

Among the injured were construction workers, security guards and staff who were later taken to an area hospital with possible carbon-monoxide poisoning.

In total, seven were taken to Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, a hospital spokeswoman said, including two who will be treated by hyperbaric chamber before being admitted. Five others will receive oxygen for several hours before being discharged, the spokeswoman said.

The mall spokesman said the Westbury Fire Department found high levels of carbon monoxide in the Abercrombie & Fitch store, where the construction worker had been using the propane equipment.

Fortunately, no shoppers were in the mall at the time, the spokesman said, and mall stores were expected to open Thursday at their regularly scheduled times.


Andrew Schmitt, a hazardous materials supervisor with the Fire Marshal's Office, said only the Abercrombie store and the service areas were affected and that the air quality had returned to normal. The mall is open, Schmitt said.

Postal worker dies after his truck is hit from behind

A postal worker whose truck was rear-ended before it crashed into a tree in Lloyd Harbor has died, Lloyd Harbor Village Police said.

A police spokesman said Suffolk County's Second Squad is investigating the death of the worker, whose name has not been released.

The worker, a man, was driving a postal truck on West Neck Road near Banbury Lane at about 3 p.m. when he reportedly was rear-ended by another vehicle, went off the road and struck a tree.

Alan Nobile, 53, of West Islip, was taken to Huntington Hospital to be treated for nonlife-threatening injuries, police said. But that night, as an ambulance was taking him to another hospital for treatment, he went into cardiac arrest and died, his family said.

The cause of the accident may have been inattentive driving by the driver of the Audi, but it was not related to texting or cellphone use, police said.

Tuesday, police said, investigators from the U.S. Postal Service examined the crash site and impounded both vehicles.

Hands-Free Cell Phone Use MORE Dangerous Then Originally Thought

The increasingly popular voice-activated, in-car technologies that allow drivers to text, talk on the phone or even use Facebook while driving still allow for dangerous mental distraction, according to a new study.

In the most comprehensive study of its kind to look at drivers' mental distraction, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that as mental workload and distractions increase, reaction time slows, brain function is compromised, and drivers scan the road less and miss visual clues, researchers say. This could potentially result in drivers being unable to see items right in front of them, such as stop signs or pedestrians.

The study sought to measure the impact of cognitive or mental distraction on driving. The other two types of driver distraction, visual and manual, which involve the eyes and the hands doing something like looking at a cellphone while sending a text have been studied much more extensively.

"There's a sort of arms race (among auto manufacturers) over what's going into the car these days," said David Strayer, a University of Utah cognitive distraction expert who co-authored the new report. "Any function that can be put in the car is being put in the car without a full examination of whether it should go in the car."

The foundation's research, which involved 150 drivers, follows a smaller study by the Texas Transportation Institute released in April, which found that texting while driving using a voice-to-text application was just as dangerous as texting manually.

Drivers in the AAA Foundation study were analyzed while engaging in eight different distracting activities as they "drove" on a sophisticated driving simulator and in an instrumented vehicle on residential streets in Salt Lake City.

Researchers measured brain waves, eye movement and other metrics to assess what happens as drivers listened to an audio book, talked on the phone or responded to voice-activated emails while driving. They found that, as drivers' mental workload increased, their reaction time slowed, their field of vision narrowed and they missed visual cues.

"This is a reminder to the general public that distracted driving is real," said Peter Kissinger, president and CEO of AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. "Three out of four drivers believe that hands-free is better than handheld. But hands-free is not risk-free, and we now have new evidence that clearly demonstrates that."

Kissinger said the foundation "is calling upon auto manufacturers and the electronics industry to work with us so we can learn as much as possible. Before any more wholesale installation of new technology, let's step back and measure how the technology affects mental distraction."

The group is also urging the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to broaden its driver distraction guidelines to include the kind of mental distraction associated with voice-activated calling.

In March, ABI Research, a market intelligence company specializing in global technology markets, projected that infotainment systems in new vehicles would jump from 9 million in 2013 to 62 million in 2018.

2 Million Cars RECALLED Due To Faulty Airbags

DETROIT - U.S. safety regulators have added about 320,000 older-model Honda Odyssey minivans to a widening probe of faulty air bags that affects at least three automakers and more than 2 million vehicles.

Front air bags on the Honda Motor Co. minivans from the 2003 and 2004 model years can inflate without a crash, possibly injuring drivers and passengers.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents posted Monday on its website that the vans have the same air bag control computers that already have caused Toyota Motor Corp. and Chrysler Group LLC to recall more than 1.8 million vehicles worldwide.

The air bag control computers were made by auto parts supplier TRW Automotive Inc.

So far, the agency has received six complaints about the Odyssey air bags inflating without crashes. In three cases people reported injuries. The NHTSA also received 41 complaints of air-bag warning lights illuminating.

The agency will determine if the problem is widespread enough to recall the minivans.

In one of the complaints about the Odyssey, a driver in Hattiesburg, Miss., told NHTSA the air bags went off suddenly in May 2012 while a 2003 Odyssey was parked and the driver had an iPad on the steering wheel. The air bags threw the iPad into the female driver's face. She ended up at a hospital emergency room, and a plastic surgeon had to be called in to stitch a cut in her upper lip. Some of the driver's teeth were chipped, and she needed dental work, the complaint said.

The owner paid $2,331 to fix the air bags, according to the complaint.

Balcony in Long Beach collapses injurying 5 people

The city's building department has prohibited access to second-story exterior balconies at a 64-year-old Long Beach apartment complex after one of them collapsed Monday, injuring five people.

Scott Kemins, a commissioner in the Long Beach Building Department, said Tuesday that none of the injuries in the balcony collapse was serious but each person was taken to a nearby hospital.


"The Building Department is requiring the owners of the complex to hire an engineering firm to inspect the balconies and make necessary repairs" Scott Kemins said.

The deterioration of the balcony's concrete and steel support, the weight of the people, plus the age of the balcony (built in 1949) contributed to the collapse.

If you or someone you know was seriously injured due to a defective or faulty product call the experienced injury attorneys at Buttafuoco & Associates.  1-800-Now-Hurt