SUFFOLK COUNTY (WABC) — This summer, authorities on Long Island are making sure everyone gets the message that drinking and driving kills.
In Suffolk County alone, authorities have made more than 100 arrests for driving under the influence and are on pace to break an all-time high set last year.
“He was 12. He didn’t even make it to high school,” Emily Cordano said.
Authorities hope a powerful loss will be a deterrent.
Emily Cordano’s childhood friend, Andrew McMorris, of Wading River, a Boy Scout, was killed by a drunk driver back in 2018.
It’s a core memory she and her classmates wish they never had.
“So we were in school, we were going to classes and we see that empty seat in Earth Science that Andrew was supposed to be sitting there,” Cordano said.
County officials in Yaphank discussed sobriety checkpoints, which will be stepped up for the upcoming July 4th weekend.
So far there have been 116 arrests for DWI this year.
“So we are definitely on pace to not only shatter that record but take a lot of people off the road that could endanger others,” Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr said.
They say essentially someone dies in a car crash every day on Long Island and Suffolk County has the most deadly crashes of any county in the state.
It’s not only the tragic loss of life, the property damage is unfathomable.
Just on Sunday in Montauk, police say a 22-year-old drunk driver plowed right through an art show.
“It looked like either a tornado had gone through or a small plane crash,” Jim Levison with the Montauk Artists Association said.
Jim Levison lost his tent along with 80 percent of his work and he wasn’t the only one.
“There was a jeweler there that had expensive jewelry who believes she may have lost upwards of $80,000 in jewelry,” Levison said.
CREDIT: Stacey Sager Eyewitnes News7
