Four people were wounded and a 17-year-old girl from Long Island died when the convertible Mustang she was riding in swerved, struck a Jeep, and flipped.
Isabel Carella, 17-year-old, was a passenger in Dominic Crocitto, also 17’s automobile on Wednesday afternoon.
16-year-old Joseph Gibiino and Liam Feeley, 17, were the other passengers in Crocitto’s vehicle.
Crocitto and Carella, who had gone to prom together three weeks previously. All four of them were Kings Park High School classmates.
When Crocitto veered and lost control of his car near the hamlet of Commack, less than 5 miles from his Kings Park house, he was ‘distracted,’ police said.
Neither drugs nor alcohol was suspected to have played a role in the incident, and it’s not known at what speed the Mustang was going when it crashed.
Annalise Wilkes, 19, of Commack, New York, was driving a blue Jeep when the automobile swerved into her path. After the incident, Wilkes was taken to the hospital and the Jeep was badly damaged. The Mustang, on the other hand, flipped over and landed in a garden after the incident.
According to his mother Betty, Gibiino was thrown from the automobile and suffered a fractured jaw and a collapsed lung.
Feeley was hurt, although not as badly as Crocitto, and Carella was declared dead on the spot.
Carella’s death has been verified by Kings Park Superintendent Timothy T. Eagen, and counseling is provided for other pupils, he added.
‘The preliminary cause of the crash appears to be distraction on the part of the operator of the Mustang, but we have no evidence to indicate that speed was a factor at this time,’ Crowley said.
Her friends and family remembered Carella as a happy and upbeat young lady.
To help the family, Kings Park High School’s PFA has begun raising money.
‘This news is saddening and unexpected, and we would like to help the family offset the cost of the inevitable expenses during this time,’ they wrote.
