VIDEO: Off-duty NYPD Officer Killed, Sergeant Critically Injured in Car Crash
NYPD rookie Officer Bianca Bennett, 27, died in a late-night crash when a speeding car driven by a fellow officer careened into a tree stump, flipped upside down, and burst into a fireball.
Bennett was a passenger in the 2012 Dodge Charger with Sgt. Randolph Price at the wheel when the off-duty duo drove away after sharing a late dinner with friends at a City Island restaurant, sources said.
Speed was likely a factor when the muscle car veered off the remote stretch of City Island Road around 11:45 p.m. Wednesday, a source told the New York Daily News.
Two officers driving home after a night shift at the department firing range pulled the critically injured Price from the flaming wreckage, but the raging flames stopped the pair from rescuing Bennett.
“She was so badly burned that, at first, we didn’t know if it was a man or a woman,” a source said.
She died at the scene around 12:10 a.m. Thursday. Her fiancé and high school sweetheart, Michael Coleman, was too distraught to speak outside Bennett’s home in Queens. The couple were to have been married in April.