A former NYPD sergeant admitted on Wednesday to killing a beloved Manhattan doorman during a wrong-way, drunk-driving crash on a Westchester highway, officials said.
Tiffany Howell, 48, pleaded guilty during a hearing at Westchester County court to aggravated vehicular homicide and second-degree manslaughter in connection with the Jan. 22 crash. She faces between 4 and 12 years in prison at her upcoming sentencing.
Prosecutors said Howell’s blood alcohol level was nearly three times the legal limit when her Infiniti, which was traveling the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway, plowed into Manuel Boitel’s Toyota RAV 4 shortly before midnight.
Medics rushed Boitel,61, to Westchester Medical Center, where he died.
Jonathan Roberts, an attorney for Boitel’s family, said Howell “dedicated her career to enforcing the very laws she violated that night.”
“More than anyone, she understood the consequences of making that choice. Yet she chose to do so, and Manuel Boitel lost his life as a result,” Roberts said.
While Boitel’s family respects the court’s decision, “they believe the sentence does not adequately reflect what she, of all people, should have understood about the consequences of her actions—or the profound loss their family has suffered,” the attorney added.
Prosecutors for the state attorney general’s office, which investigates deaths in which police officers may be at fault, said Howell, an 18-year veteran, was recorded at a Scarsdale social event before the crash that showed her having several drinks at an open bar. She later left alone.
Howell initially drove north on the parkway’s northbound lanes before reversing course and heading in the wrong direction, causing the crash, according to reports.
Boitel, meanwhile, was returning to his home in Peekskill from his job as a doorman at Manhattan’s St. Tropez luxury condominium building on E. 64th St. near First Ave.
According to CBS News, Boitel’s wife noticed that her husband’s GPS tracker seemed stuck in the same spot on the Taconic State Parkway for more than an hour. Their sons drove to the location, saw the wreckage and recognized their father’s car.
Relatives said that in his younger years, Boitel had dreamed of becoming a cop.
“Beyond the obvious grief, there’s a deep and painful irony here,” Roberts told the Daily News days after the crash. “Manny had enormous respect for law enforcement and even dreamed of becoming an officer himself.”
Howell, a married mother of two, resigned from the NYPD in March, two years before she would have received her full pension.
By resigning before she could be fired, Howell remains entitled to a portion of her pension, which she’ll be able to access in early 2028, officials said.
