Daniel Gomez was arrested Tuesday at his home after a fatal hit-and-run crash on Sunrise Highway in Lindenhurst, and police said he was charged with leaving the scene of a motor vehicle crash involving a fatality. The case now moves to court after a pedestrian was killed early Tuesday at 4:25 a.m.
That crash took the life of Erik Ermanovics, 56, whom police said was homeless. He was crossing the westbound side of Sunrise Highway at North Indiana Avenue when he was struck by a 2012 Honda Accord, then taken to Good Samaritan University Hospital in West Islip, where he was pronounced dead.
Gomez fled in his vehicle after the crash, but police did not say what led up to the impact or why he left. That gap hangs over a case that has already moved from scene investigation to arrest, because the charge does not depend on explaining the seconds before the collision so much as on what happened after it: a driver left a fatal crash behind and kept going.
Gomez was to be held overnight at the Third Precinct and arraigned Wednesday at First District Court in Central Islip. For Ermanovics, the legal process now continues without the person whose death started it, and the unanswered question is the one police have not filled in yet — what happened in those moments before the Honda struck him on Sunrise Highway?
