An off-duty New York City police sergeant who killed a Peekskill man in a wrong way crash on the Taconic State Parkway had a blood alcohol level more than three times the legal limit, according to a state prosecutor.
Tiffany Howell, 47, pleaded not guilty Monday, March 2, in Westchester County Court at her arraignment on homicide charges in the death of 61-year-old Manuel Boitel, who was heading home late on Jan. 22 from his job as a doorman at an apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The top felony charge, aggravated vehicular homicide, carries a minimum sentence of 5 years in prison and a maximum of 8 1/3 to 25 years.
Howell was returning to her Warwick home from a “Holy Smoke!” fundraiser she helped organize at Mom’s Cigar Warehouse on Central Park Avenue in Greenburgh. The event benefited the Manhattan-Bronx-Staten Island branch of the NYPD Holy Name Society, of which the 18-year veteran of the department was the treasurer.
The Taconic was the regular north route home for Howell but she got turned around and started heading south in the northbound lanes when her 2021 Infiniti smashed into Boitel’s 2024 Toyota near Route 117 in Mount Pleasant.
Boitel’s relatives went to the scene when he was late getting home because they realized from tracking his whereabouts that he’d been there for a few hours.
Because the death involved a police officer, the state Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation oversaw the probe and state prosecutors presented the case to a grand jury. Howell has been suspended without pay and her guns were taken by the NYPD.
Defense lawyers Andrew Quinn and Anthony DiFiore surrendered Howell to the state police at the courthouse Monday morning after learning of the indictment. Howell, her left arm in a sling, sat at the defense table throughout the arraignment.
Boitel’s wife of more than 40 years and two adult sons sat on the opposite side of the court from Howell’s husband.
Assistant Attorney General Allison Stuart, senior investigative counsel with OSI, said that Howell consumed several drinks at the fundraiser and that her blood alcohol content was 0.26 percent. The legal limit in New York for DWI is 0.08 percent.
“Her actions driving highly intoxicated in the wrong direction of a parkway killed Manuel Boitel,” Stuart told Westchester Judge George Fufidio. She had no regard for his life, or of any other life for that matter, as she drove into oncoming traffic.”
Stuart asked for bail of $500,000 cash, $750,000 bond or $1 million bond, secured by $100,000 cash.
Fufidio released Howell on $250,000 bond after suspending her drivers license at the prosecution’s request. He declined to impose electronic monitoring, including a sobriety check, saying he did not expect her to be driving because if caught her bail would likely be revoked.
In arguing for bail closer to what the judge ended up setting, Quinn acknowledged Boitel’s death was tragic but insisted Howell was not a flight risk, had no criminal record and the “nature of these allegations is just a stark departure from the behavior and characteristics she’s displayed her entire life.”
Howell is also charged with second-degree manslaughter and first- and- second-degree manslaughter.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: NYPD cop charged with homicide in drunk wrong-way crash on Taconic
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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