WASH. SQ. PUNK
A foulmouthed and allegedly drunken driver on Sunday plowed a car with 11 open speeding tickets into both a police vehicle carrying two cops and the Washington Square Arch, authorities said.
Jeremy Molina, 25, also allegedly had weed on him when cops cuffed him for smashing his 2017 Nissan Maxima into the Washington Square Park landmark and an NYPD car with two officers inside around 2 a.m. Sunday, police said.
The Bayside, Queens, resident faces charges including driving while intoxicated, refusal to take a breath test, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and marijuana possession.
City traffic records show that Molina’s Nissan has been issued 11 tickets since 2018 — six of them for speeding in school zones in Queens.
Molina was allegedly barreling down Fifth Avenue and failed to turn onto Washington Square North, according to law-enforcement sources and witnesses, including one who told The Post that the driver was moving at “highway speed.”
The suspect drove straight through a row of metal barricades and into the parked police car, whose occupants were guarding the iconic marble arch, police said.
“We heard a loud screeching. I saw the car go full speed, very fast, right into where that cop car was. I saw the impact,” said 24-year-old witness Maurice Russo, who lives nearby.
“I saw one of the officers rightfully pull out his gun . . . He just said, ‘Stay on the ground! Stay on the ground!’ to the guy who was driving the car that crashed,” Russo said.
Molina’s ride was totaled following the crash — but he was intact enough to stumble from his wreck, blood dripping from his nose, and shout, “Suck my d--k” at a New York Post photographer.
“[One] cop was taken out on a stretcher — he had a neck brace on,” Russo said of the injured officer.
That police officer is being treated for back and neck injuries at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
The officer also suffered nonlifethreatening head injuries in the dramatic crash.
The other cop who was in the vehicle refused medical treatment at the hospital, according to sources.
Molina was taken to Bellevue Hospital with a head injury, and later charged.
The arch was not damaged.