Upper East Side Father of Triplets Killed in Sidewalk Crash; Driver Was Longtime Friend, Post Reports

A 35-year-old Upper East Side man was among two pedestrians killed Friday evening when an alleged drunk driver lost control of his SUV at the corner of West 109th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, jumped the curb, and plowed into a group of people on the sidewalk.

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Michael Saint-Hilaire, who lived at 250 East 83rd Street, was waiting at a bus stop for his mother when he was struck, his uncle Jonathan Saint-Hilaire told the New York Post. The driver, 61-year-old Elvin Suarez, had been a longtime friend of Saint-Hilaire’s, the Post reported.

Saint-Hilaire and his mother had spoken by phone at 5:53 p.m., and he had texted her, “I’m here waiting for you,” moments before the 6 p.m. crash, according to his uncle. Saint-Hilaire was the father of triplets — a daughter and two sons — who turn two on June 7, longtime friend Zubosqui Garcia told the NY Daily News.

“He was like my kid,” his uncle told the Post. “I used to take him for weeks at a time. When he grew up, he would call me his brother.”

Saint-Hilaire worked in an operating room at Mount Sinai Health System and had spent the past year trying to join the NYPD, his uncle said. His grandmother had pleaded with him not to become a police officer, fearing for his safety.

According to the NYPD, Suarez was traveling northbound on Amsterdam Avenue in a 2019 Mercedes-Benz GLC 300 around 6 p.m. when he struck a parked Volkswagen Jetta roughly 40 feet south of West 109th Street. The Mercedes continued through the intersection, drove over a concrete pedestrian island on the northwest corner, and struck four pedestrians — Saint-Hilaire, a 46-year-old man, a 44-year-old man, and a 36-year-old man — before slamming into a parked Chevrolet Astro van with a 51-year-old man inside. The impact set off a chain-reaction collision involving four more parked vehicles.

Janice Diaz, a retired EMT who began performing CPR at the scene, told CBS News that the victims knew many of the bystanders who had gathered around them. “These are all people from our neighborhood,” she said.

Saint-Hilaire and 46-year-old Jason Negron, a doorman at a West 110th Street building who had ended his shift two hours earlier, were pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Morningside. The two surviving pedestrians, the van occupant, and Suarez are all in stable condition.

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Suarez was arrested at the scene and charged with two counts of manslaughter, three counts of vehicular manslaughter, two counts of vehicular assault, and driving while intoxicated.

“For a drunk person to come and take his whole life, it’s just not fair,” Saint-Hilaire’s uncle told the Post.

The crash remains under investigation by the NYPD Highway District’s Collision Investigation Squad.

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