A drunken wrong-way driver slammed into a livery vehicle early Thursday on the Belt Parkway, killing one man and leaving three others hospitalized, police said.
The collision occurred at around 1:55 a.m. when a 50-year-old man driving a 2011 Volkswagen SUV eastbound in the westbound lane near the Verrazano Bridge plowed into a 2018 Honda Accord driven by a 20-year-old man and carrying a 29-year-old woman in the front passenger seat and a man, 27, in the backseat, cops said.
The wreck left both cars completely mangled and the black Uber-affiliated Honda with TLC plates, up over the lane median.
The 27-year-old victim, identified as Gerald Obah of Murray Hill, Manhattan, was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.
The wrong-way driver, identified as Aleh Sheipak, was initially taken to Maimonides Medical Center.
Sheipak, a Brooklyn resident, was later charged with manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, vehicular assault, DWI and DWAI, police said.
Emergency responders also rushed the driver of the Honda to Maimonides Medical Center, while the female passenger in the front seat was taken to NYU Langone Hospital.
The livery driver suffered a leg fracture, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission.
The three who survived the gruesome collision were in stable condition, police said.
“I was coming down off the bridge, saw the guy coming the wrong way. He hit the car, and it went 20 feet in the air, turned and landed hard on the rail there,” said a witness, Jack Aboutboul, of Sheepshead Bay, who then called 911.
Aboutboul said he and another motorist ran over to help. “We were trying to get the doors open. We tried to open the door and see if we could get anyone out,” he said. “The only door we could open was the back door, and once we got the door open we realized he was probably gone. He had blood all over his face, and he didn’t have a pulse. His feet were stuck underneath. We couldn’t get him out.”
Aboutboul added, “We saw through the airbags that there was a woman in the front seat, she was bleeding out and holding her neck.”
He said that Sheipak “looked like he was drunk.”
It was not immediately clear whether the livery driver was on the clock at the time of the crash.
An Uber spokeswoman said that the cabbie was not working for Uber at the time of the collision, but said a livery driver can be affiliated with an Uber base and do trips with any other app.