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The Brooklyn woman who intentionally hit a police officer with her car on the Upper East Side last year has been sentenced to two years in prison.
Sahara Dula, 25, was sentenced Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court after pleading guilty in June to second-degree assault. The incident occurred on January 17, 2024, near Park Avenue and East 71st Street, when Dula—driving the wrong way—struck Officer Ruchiran Dias, who was guarding a vehicle linked to an unrelated high-end retail robbery on Madison Avenue.
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Body-worn camera footage showed Dula’s Lexus accelerating south in the northbound lanes of Park Avenue before hitting the officer, launching him over the hood and onto the pavement. Dias was hospitalized with a broken leg and other injuries.Court documents show that after her arrest, Dula told investigators she had just smoked marijuana and admitted, “F— these cops; he wouldn’t move. I told the cop I wanted to go straight, and he would not move, so I hit him. I did it on purpose.”
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry criticized the sentence as too lenient, saying in a statement that Dula “could have killed him” and that the justice system “needs to send a message that there will be zero leniency for attacks on police officers.”
Dula’s attorney, Patricia Wright, told Pix 11 News that her client “has taken responsibility for her actions,” but added that the NYPD “has not yet fully addressed the fact that Ms. Dula was assaulted, specifically, that she was kicked in the head at least twice after she had been subdued and her hands were behind her back. This is visible from multiple angles on the body-worn camera footage of the officers who apprehended her.”
Wright added, “It is not the job of the NYPD to deliver justice or retribution. Under the constitutions of New York State and the United States of America, it is the job of the judicial system to determine guilt and the subsequent punishment for said guilt.”
Dula was first arrested following the 2024 incident and indicted the following month on multiple counts of assault, reckless driving, and operating a vehicle while under the influence. Prosecutors said she drove her Lexus the wrong way up Park Avenue for about ten blocks before accelerating into Officer Dias, who had approached her to direct her into the correct lane.
At the time, Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg said Dula “not only allegedly endangered the lives of countless people traveling on Park Avenue, but she deliberately sought to harm an NYPD officer.”
The officer has not yet been able to return to work.
According to the NY Post, Dula was also arrested in March 2022 “for criminal mischief and cops alleged she destroyed property.”
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