2 BEERS, 1 TRAGIC DEATH
• Trucker charged after crash with bicyclist • In defense, lawyer cites chicken salad sandwich
Cops collected two empty beer cans from the cab of a drunken garbage truck driver after his fatal collision with an Australian tourist, prosecutors said Saturday.
Felipe Chairez, 44, faced drunken-driving and other charges at a hearing one day after 23-year-old Madison Jane Lyden landed beneath the wheels of his truck while bicycling uptown in the Central Park West bike lanes.
The empties were found inside Chairez’s vehicle following the fatal accident before horrified West Side witnesses. Chairez was headed from a Greenwich Village construction site to a Bronx dump around 4:45 p.m. when Lyden swerved to avoid a livery car parked illegally in the bike lane near W. 67th St.
Chairez, a driver with the Mellifont Construction Corp. in Orangeburg, Rockland County, remained at the scene following the crash. Once police arrived, cops noticed the goateed driver appeared to be drunk, and Chairez acknowledged drinking two brews before the accident.
He was charged with drunken driving, driving
while impaired and operating a commercial vehicle while intoxicated, prosecutors said. While the standard for drunken driving is a blood alcohol level of .08, a reading of .04 or higher is sufficient in the case of commercial vehicle drivers.
Defense attorney Kenneth Ware mounted a unique culinary defense for his client, claiming Chairez could be cleared by the chicken salad sandwich that he downed along with the beers.
“If what they say is true, that he had a chicken salad sandwich — then if he had alcohol, the alcohol may have been able to be absorbed by his lunch he had,” Ware said. “If that’s true … all he is charged with right now is a misdemeanor.”
The 17-year veteran truck driver had no previous arrests and no history of problems while working for Mellifont, added Ware.
Chairez, wearing a gray Tshirt and jeans, said little in court and nothing as he left the Manhattan hearing without bail following a brief arraignment.
Lyden lived in Victoria, Australia, where she worked at a recreational center in the city of Geelong as a swim instructor, life guard and receptionist. She was vacationing in Manhattan with friends when tragedy struck.
”She was incredibly intelligent and so full of life,” friend Caity Ashton told the Sunday Herald Sun. “She was so beautiful both inside and out.”
A second tourist was riding north with Lyden when she was forced to maneuver around a parked livery car blocking the bicycle lane. The tourist “bounced off” the passing garbage truck before landing beneath its wheels as passersby gaped in disbelief. Lyden — a former swimming instructor and lifeguard — died a short time later at Roosevelt Hospital. She grew up in southern Tasmania, where her parents were wellknown for their philanthropy.
After the crash, her friend stood over the bleeding bicyclist, screaming at Lyden: “Baby, baby, baby — wake up!”
No ticket was issued to the livery driver for pulling into an illegal space at a bus stop.
Paul Steeley White, the executive director of the bicyclist advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, said the blocked bike lane created a “crash waiting to happen.”
“Every day in this city, bike lanes meant to protect people on bikes are used as drop-off lanes, parking lanes, and idling lanes for lazy and entitled drivers,” said White. “As a city we should be ashamed, because this death could have been prevented.”
A call to Mellifont Construction for comment was not returned Saturday. The company has four trucks and three drivers, but has never been cited before for having a driver impaired by drugs or alcohol, according to the Federal Carrier Safety Administration.
This is another black mark for the private carting industry, under fire recently for using impaired drivers-turned-late-night road menaces.
In June, a private garbage hauler was arrested for drunk driving after he plowed his truck into several cars, a tree, and a Brooklyn home’s front gate. One month earlier, a Bronx commercial trash truck driber was accused for killing two people on his route in a lethal five-month stretch.
Carting companies pick up garbage from private businesses while the city’s Sanitation Department trucks haul trash from private homes. The de Blasio administration is working on overhauling the commercial waste industry and hopes to launch a new system where the city is divided into zones and one company is tapped to pick up trash from businesses in each area.
A 2016 Sanitation Department study said the plan would cut truck traffic and pollution. Private trash carters killed 43 people between 2010 and November 2017, city data shows.