Officer Struck and Killed by Driver on LIE, Driver Arrested

Summary

• An NYPD officer was struck and killed by a motorist on the Long Island Expressway in Fresh Meadows early Tuesday morning.
• The officer is identified as Anastasios Tsakos, 43 years old. He was a 14-year veteran and member of the department’s Highway District 3.
• Commissioner Dermot Shea said in a morning briefing that Tsakos was killed just before 2 a.m. while diverting traffic at the scene of a previous fatal collision at the LIE and Francis Lewis Boulevard.
• Shea said the driver of a 2013 Volkswagen which struck him was a 32-year-old woman who was driving intoxicated and with a suspended license.
• She was apprehended soon after striking Tsakos and is now facing charges including vehicular manslaughter, leaving the scene of a deadly accident, and driving while impaired.
• "We see here a horrendous pattern, people doing the wrong thing and other people dead because of it, and one of them a hero officer who did everything right in his life for us, and he is dead because of other people's negligence," Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the briefing.