An NYPD sergeant in the department’s Office of Crime Control Strategies was hospitalized early Friday after she got into a fatal, head-on crash while driving the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway in Westchester County, officials said.
Sgt. Tiffany Howell, 47, was off duty and traveling south in the northbound lanes on the parkway in Mount Pleasant at about 11:40 p.m. Thursday when her 2021 Infiniti slammed head-on into a 2024 Toyota operated by 61-year-old Manuel Boitel of Peekskill, N.Y.
First responders rushed Boitel to Westchester Medical Center, but he couldn’t be saved. Howell was also taken to Westchester Medical Center, where she was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries and is expected to survive.
State Troopers are investigating the crash and are trying to determine what led to Howell driving the wrong way on the highway, about 30 miles north of Manhattan.
Howell had left work hours before the crash, officials said. She lives in Warwick, N.Y., nearly 50 miles from where the crash took place.
The NYPD on Friday placed Howell on modified assignment, stripping her of her gun and shield, as the investigation continued, police sources said.
No criminal charges have been filed against Howell, a spokeswoman for the State Police said. The sergeant was given a Blood Alcohol Content test to see if she had been drinking before the crash, but the results of the test were not immediately disclosed, a police source said.
“The investigation remains ongoing,” the spokeswoman said. “Additional information will be released as it becomes available.”
The spokeswoman added that since Howell is an NYPD officer, the state Attorney General’s office will be investigating the case as well as the state troopers.
Howell is an 18-year veteran of the NYPD. She was assigned to the Juvenile Strategies Unit, which is part of the NYPD’s Office of Crime Control Strategies last July.
Anyone who may have witnessed the crash is asked to contact the New York State Police Hawthorne Bureau of Criminal Investigation at (914) 742-6057.
