Out-of-control driver had taken PCP, smoked weed before fatal Harlem crash: prosecutors

The 49-year-old speedster who killed one man and wounded four others in a wild Harlem crash had smoked both marijuana and PCP before getting behind the wheel, prosecutors said Saturday.

Kevin Crosby was speeding down a bus-only lane on W. 125th St. and Frederick Douglass Blvd. around 8 p.m. Thursday when he hit two delivery workers on their e-bikes, sending them “hurtling through the air,” according to prosecutors and court documents.

“He is on video driving at an extremely high rate of speed, as compared to other vehicles, straight into a person on a bike,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Emily Hong said at Crosby’s arraignment late Friday. “He clearly also strikes another cyclist with his vehicle.”

“Both cyclists fly in the air and land a significant distance away,” Hong said.

Crosby’s out-of-control red Hyundai Tucson with South Carolina plates also hit two other cars and a police cruiser during the wild ride. Crosby finally came to a stop after slamming into and wedging his SUV under an 18-wheeler truck parked nearby.

The Hyundai sent off a spray of sparks as it roared down W. 125th St. moments after striking the two cyclists. One of the driver’s victims was thrown into the air as he passed, the video shows.

Startled shoppers were knocked off their feet as Crosby blew by them.

“(Crosby was) still driving at a high rate of speed, now in the bus-only lane, and now with what appeared to be a person on the hood of the red SUV,” an officer who was at the scene is quoted saying in the criminal complaint. “At that same time, I also observed the red SUV strike a bicyclist. I then observed the person on the hood of the vehicle and the bicyclist hurtling through the air and landing on the road approximately two car lengths away.”

Darlyn Zacarias, 28, one of the e-bikers who was struck, was rushed to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, where he died from his injuries. The second e-biker, 37, was taken to Harlem Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition.

Three other victims, a 40-year-old in a parked Toyota RAV4 and two men, ages 28 and 23, in a parked Lexus, were rushed to Harlem Hospital with minor injuries. The Tucson hit both vehicles before slamming into the police cruiser and the tractor-trailer, cops said.

Zacarias immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 9 years old and for the past two years worked as a deliverista, according to the victim’s family.

The fatal crash took place a block away from Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater. Shoppers on the bustling block watched in horror as the red Hyundai careened out of control and almost landed on the sidewalk, where it would have crushed dozens of people.

“He was coming on us on the sidewalk, and then another car that was parked between us and him blocked him,” a manager of a beauty supply store on 125th St. told the Daily News Friday. The woman declined to give her name. “He was speeding in a movie. Like flying!

“Last night none of us slept,” she said. “When I went home I cried so much. I said, ‘It could have been me.’”

Crosby, who wasn’t seriously hurt in the crash, was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, manslaughter and driving while impaired by drugs.

He was clearly intoxicated when cops pulled the Bronx resident out of the mangled Hyundai, court papers note.

“The defendant had pinpoint pupils, slurred speech, was swaying on his feet, and had an odor of what he believed to be PCP or K2 on his breath,” prosecutors said, the latter referring to synthetic marijuana.

Crosby later admitted that he had smoked PCP that morning, then smoked weed before driving, Hong said.

Prosecutors added that Crosby has an extensive criminal history with 21 arrests stretching back to the 1990s. Over the last three decades, he’s been arrested for gunpoint robbery, drug possession, assault and criminal trespass, and in 2007 was arrested for operating a motor vehicle without a license, officials said.

In 2022 Crosby was convicted of reckless driving and reckless endangerment for colliding with a parked Toyota and a coffee truck in the Bronx. The truck was knocked onto the sidewalk.

Three people were hurt in that crash, officials said. Crosby ultimately pleaded guilty and was given probation.

His defense attorney Seann Riley said Crosby’s apparent intoxication “doesn’t tell the full story.”

“The car had mechanical issues and the brakes and the steering wheel were jammed,” Riley told Judge Jeffrey Gershuny as he asked for a suitable bail.

Gershuny ordered Crosby held without bail until his next court appearance. The judge also had Crosby’s driving license suspended.

Zacarias was the fifth cyclist killed on New York City’s streets and the 34th New Yorker killed in a traffic crash so far this year, according to the bicyclist advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.

“We’re horrified to learn that a single driver was able to speed through one of the busiest corridors in Harlem, striking multiple people in a matter of seconds and killing one while injuring four others. We refuse to live in a New York City where this is normal,” Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas said in a statement. “Speeding is a scourge on our city. It terrorizes our neighborhoods, terrifies our children and parents, kills our neighbors every week, and makes our beautiful streets into miserable places to be.”

Thursday’s fatal crash “was not an anomaly but a constant recurrence,” Furnas added.

“The drivers may change, but the threat to New Yorkers remains the same,” he said. “We need to be better protected from speeding drivers, and the City of New York needs more tools to protect us.”