An NYPD highway officer from Suffolk County died at a local hospital after he was struck by a hit-and-run motorist on the Long Island Expressway near Francis Lewis Boulevard in Queens early Tuesday morning, the NYPD said.
The officer has been identified as Anastasios Tsakos, a 14-year-veteran hailed as a “cop’s cop.” He is from East Northport, the NYPD said.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea told reporters at an early-morning press conference that Tsakos, a father of two young children, was hit by a 32-year-old woman from Hempstead who was intoxicated and driving on a suspended license.
The NYPD later identified the woman as Jessica Beauvais.
Tsakos, 43, had been directing traffic off the expressway after a nearby fatal single-car accident shortly after midnight, police said.
Shea said the first accident occurred at about 12:30 a.m., when a car with three passengers headed east on the expressway struck a utility pole.
“Before Officer Tsakos arrived at the scene (other) NYPD officers encountered a car that was on fire. They rushed toward that car, broke a window and pulled people out of the car,” the commissioner said.
One passenger, in the back seat, did not survive, police said.
Then Tsakos and other officers were deployed to direct traffic around the first crash. All eastbound lanes of the highway were closed.
Shea said that about 1 a.m., “We have a 2013 Volkswagen traveling east, it swerves to avoid vehicles and then strikes Officer Tsakos standing in the roadway next to his marked police car.”
The driver did not stop, police said. She was arrested a short time later and charges have yet to be filed.
Shea said the driver must have known she had been in a collision: “I think when you see images of her car, the windshield was completely shattered. There is no way not to know you struck an individual.”
Tsakos was married. He and his wife have two children, a 6-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter, officials said.
“They will never see their father again because somebody did the wrong thing,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “Just so much pain. Please, everyone realize, this family will never be whole again.”
De Blasio pledged: “We will do everything we can to support these children, to support this widow — but it won’t be enough.”
De Blasio said that the drivers in both collisions were driving on suspended licenses — “a horrendous pattern,” he said.
Tsakos joined the NYPD in January 2007 and was assigned to Highway Unit 3 in August 2014, according to the NYPD.
Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York, said that in addition to being “a cop’s cop,” Tsakos was known as “a good guy.”
Shea, saying he did not know Tsakos, said the officer was described to him as “the best of the best, a person who would never ask why, just what needs to be done.”
With Anthony M. DeStefano
