Chantel Solomon, 6, hurt in deadly East Massapequa crash, has died, police say
A 6-year-old girl has died from injuries sustained last Sunday when a driver who had been speeding at 120 mph rear-ended the family’s SUV in East Massapequa — raising the crash’s death toll to four, Nassau County police said Saturday.
The girl, Chantel Solomon of Uniondale, had been hospitalized with catastrophic injuries since the crash, which that day killed her grandfather, Patrice Huntley, 60, of Flushing, and two of his children, Jeremiah, 10, and Hannah, 13, of Uniondale.
The family had been out to get ice cream to celebrate Patrice’s new job, the police commissioner has said.
First responders work at the scene of the crash on the evening of Aug. 6. Credit: Paul Mazza
But around 7:20 p.m., Huntley’s SUV was stopped at a red light when it was rear-ended by the alleged speeder, Michael Deangelo, 32, driving a 2023 Hyundai Kona, according to police.
Deangelo, of Lindenhurst, had cocaine and fentanyl in his system at the time of the crash, Det. Capt. Stephen Fitzpatrick, the police supervisor overseeing the investigation, said Friday. Deangelo was arrested[1] earlier Friday at a hospital, where he is being treated for his own injuries, and charged with vehicular homicide, vehicular manslaughter, assault, drunken driving with drugs and reckless driving, according to Fitzpatrick.
In announcing those charges, Fitzpatrick said Deangelo could face more if Chantel died. No update on any new charges was immediately provided.
Deangelo was ordered held on $500,000 cash or $1 million bond bail, or $5 million secured at 10%, according to Brendan Brosh, a spokesman for the county district attorney’s office.
Chantel was removed from life support about 1:40 a.m. Saturday, said her grandmother Tasheba Hamilton-Huntley, who was in the room at Cohen Children’s Medical Center. While alive in the hospital, Chantel had a series of strokes and other medical complications, making it “more harmful for her to be on life support.”
Chantel Solomon’s grandmother Tasheba Hamilton-Huntley, right, and mother, Divine Hamilton, at the Ronald McDonald House in New Hyde Park on Saturday. Credit: Newsday / J. Conrad Williams Jr.
The family, Hamilton-Huntley said, cannot understand: Why was the driver speeding so fast? Why had he taken drugs before driving?
“This man has turned all of our lives upside down,” she said. “We lost four lives. He should not be able to see outdoors ever again.”
She added: “There’s nothing that he can say, ever. I am beside myself. I can’t even keep food down. I haven’t slept in five days.”
“Right now, we’re just holding the pieces together. Trying to,” she said.
The family is planning a single funeral service for the four victims, to be held at Rehoboth Cathedral in Brooklyn, she said, with burial at Calverton National Cemetery.
Patrice’s girlfriend, Lashea Fraser of Harlem, said she was “speechless and angry” over Chantel’s death.
The crash was one of four deadly collisions last Sunday into Monday[2] across Long Island in which the death toll has now risen to seven. The victims include the Huntleys in East Massapequa, a 72-year-old woman[3] struck by a hit-and-run driver in Ronkonkoma, a 77-year-old bicyclist in Hicksville, and a 6-year-old who was struck by an alleged drunken driver in West Hempstead[4].
There were 74,683 crashes on Long Island in 2022 — 38,935 in Nassau County and 35,748 in Suffolk, according to preliminary statistics compiled by the University at Albany-based Institute for Traffic Safety Management & Research.
In those crashes, 80 were killed and 14,514 injured in Nassau and 154 were killed and 13,533 injured in Suffolk. There were at least 70 pedestrians who were killed on the Island last year — 50 in Suffolk and 20 in Nassau. And seven cyclists were killed in Suffolk and two in Nassau.
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
References
- ^ Deangelo was arrested (www.newsday.com)
- ^ one of four deadly collisions last Sunday into Monday (www.newsday.com)
- ^ a 72-year-old woman (www.newsday.com)
- ^ an alleged drunken driver in West Hempstead (www.newsday.com)