A Tesla driver accused of killing her friend when she slammed into scaffolding on a Midtown sidewalk told cops she remembered knocking back several drinks before getting behind the wheel, but not driving on 42nd St., Manhattan prosecutors said Thursday.
The disturbing admission by driver Alejandra Parahsingh, 27, emerged at her Manhattan Criminal Court arraignment after midnight, where prosecutors charged her with vehicular manslaughter for the death of her passenger and longtime friend, Elise Suomi — a new mom to a 3-month-old baby girl — and leaving the scene of a fatal accident without reporting it.
Assistant District Attorney Sloane Salina said Parahsingh spent Tuesday night drinking at two bars in Inwood before getting into the car to drive downtown. Barreling down E. 42nd St. after 2:30 a.m., she careened off the road and mounted the sidewalk between Madison and Park Aves. before slamming into scaffolding, a USPS mailbox and a bus stop pole, the prosecutor said.
Suomi, 27, suffered a “catastrophic head injury” in the crash, yet Parahsingh kept driving, Salina said.
A cyclist who witnessed the incident pursued Parahsingh as she veered back onto the street and continued to drive east before hitting the brakes at E. 42nd St. and Second Ave., according to the criminal complaint.
Salina said in court that responding officers were met with a struggle from Parahsingh “in a highly intoxicated state,” with the criminal complaint further detailing that she reeked of alcohol and had bloodshot eyes. Medics rushed Suomi to Bellevue Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Neither woman had been wearing a seatbelt.
A full four hours after the crash, Parahsingh, who only suffered minor injuries, blew a 0.229% on a breathalyzer test at Bellevue, almost three times the legal limit, according to prosecutors.
When she was taken to the Midtown South Precinct, she admitted to consuming multiple alcoholic beverages in the hours before the crash, the complaint details, but “did not remember driving the car on 42nd Street.” She said she lived in Connecticut, where she volunteered that she’d had a recent brush with the law.
According to cops, the Tesla was registered to a woman who lives in Waterbury, Conn. Parahsingh didn’t own it and hadn’t been driving very long, per a February 2020 post on her Instagram page showing her on an ATV in the desert in Abu Dhabi, captioned, “First time driving anything” beside a smiley face and a heart emoji. Hours before Wednesday’s horrific crash, she uploaded a photo of a tequila bottle.
Judge Jeffrey Gershuny held Parahsingh on $50,000 cash bail. Jail records showed she was being held at Rikers on Thursday morning. The Daily News reached out to her lawyer for comment.
In an interview with The News on Wednesday, the victim’s devastated brother, who asked to be referred to only by his first name, Angel, said Suomi worked unimaginably hard to escape poverty and make a good life for her baby daughter after growing up in shelters with her six siblings.
Suomi was working toward becoming a certified nursing assistant at Swedish Institute College of Health Sciences and worked as a home health aide.
“She was very motivated to beat the odds,” Angel said. “She had it together. She had her plans ready.”
Suomi’s sister Jasmine Ortiz lamented that her “beautiful” baby niece wasn’t old enough to hold onto memories of her mother.
“She’s only 3 months old,” Ortiz said. “She won’t remember.”
Ortiz, who also works as a home health aide, said her sister had covered her shift earlier that evening until 9:30 p.m. and that she didn’t know how she ended up out so late with Parahsingh, who Suomi had known since high school.
She was furious to hear Parahsingh kept driving after the crash instead of stopping to call for help.
“Why would you keep on going?” she asked. “She deserves whatever is coming for her.”