Trini visitor killed in Brooklyn crash

A TRINIDADIAN on vacation in New York for the holidays was killed in an accident on Christmas Day in Brooklyn.

The dead man was identified as Seon Andrews, 25. An Army soldier, another Trinidadian,  home from Iraq for Christmas was the driver of the car in which Andrews was killed. The accident occurred when a drunken driver ploughed through a red light in Brooklyn and rammed his truck, cops said. “There was nothing I could do,” Corey Durham told his father, Girvin Drakes, just hours after the accident at Atlantic and Nostrand Avenues. The impact sent Durham’s Ford truck barrelling into a Long Island Rail Road bridge stanchion, killing Andrews.

The driver of the other car, Fritz Elysee, 31, of Brooklyn was reportedly drunk behind the wheel, police said. Elysee, who was at Kings County Hospital in critical but stable condition, was charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI) as prosecutors weighed heavier charges. Durham’s blood tested positive for alcohol, cops said, so he also was hit with driving-while-intoxicated charges. “He told me he had a green light,” Drakes of Brooklyn said of his son, who returned in October from a nine-month tour in Iraq. “He really broke down. I (have been) running like a chicken without a head all morning, and this is Christmas.”

Durham, a career military man stationed at an Army base in Georgia since returning from Iraq, arrived at his father’s Brooklyn home for the holidays three days ago. The 25-year-old soldier spent Christmas Eve with some friends, and was driving home when the holiday horror unfolded at about 4.30 am, his dad said. Durham’s 2001 Ford carried six passengers as he drove west on Atlantic Avenue. Elysee was heading south on Nostrand Avenue in a black Nissan and drove through a red light, ramming Durham’s truck and another car, cops said. Andrews was pronounced dead at St John’s Episcopal Hospital. Durham was treated for minor injuries; the driver of the third car was relatively unscathed.

Drakes, 48, who said he didn’t know Andrews, said the war had changed his son forever. “Iraq really killed his life,” he said, adding that his son split from his wife after he came home. “It broke him down ... when he came back, he was not the same person.” Drakes feared for his son’s military career because of the DWI charge, but said, “I’ll stand by him.” The Brooklyn district attorney’s office was  investigating the crash. By yesterday, Elysee had not been charged in connection with Andrews’ death.

Durham has a clean driving record, but Elysee has a history of trouble, according to the Department of Motor Vehicle records. He was involved in two accidents in eight days in February 2000, as well as three speeding convictions that year. His licence was revoked for two years in June 2001. At Elysee’s home, a woman who said she was his wife, said, “This is not like him.” She said Elysee had dropped her off at work at 11 pm Christmas Eve, and was supposed to have picked her up on Christmas Day. “What was he doing?” she wept. “A person died? Oh, my God.”