A speeding driver behind the wheel of a Ford SUV crashed into a cop car in Kensington on Thursday night, sending three people to the hospital, and the driver to the slammer.
The SUV driver, whom police identified as 29-year-old Moshe Cohen of Midwood, was blazing southbound on Coney Island Avenue at around 7:20 pm, while displaying sirens and red-and-blue lights common on unmarked police cars, per video of the incident.
An NYPD spokesperson told Brooklyn Paper, however, that the vehicle was not a police car, and that the sirens and flashing lights were attached to the car illegally.
Surveillance video shows Cohen driving between lanes of traffic at high speeds, including on the wrong side of the road, before reaching the intersection of Foster Avenue, where other drivers were waiting at a red light.
Failing to stop, Cohen sped through the intersection and collided with a NYPD patrol car, which had active lights and sirens, as the cops were responding to a call near Foster Avenue.
The impact severely damaged both vehicles, and caused the police car to collide with a nearby Toyota. Cohen’s car ended up smashing into a traffic light pole, which then collapsed.
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Video of the scene shows Cohen lying on the ground after the crash, bloodied and in pain, and being assisted by pedestrians before paramedics arrived to take him away.
EMS workers took the drivers of all three impacted vehicles — Cohen, a 28-year-old police officer, and the 32-year-old Toyota driver — to Maimonides Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries, a NYPD spokesperson said.
Police arrested Cohen and slapped him with a litany of charges, including reckless driving, reckless endangerment, speed violations, unauthorized emergency-colored lights, failing to obey traffic signals, a license plate violation, and others.
The incident comes after a number of other recent crashes around the five boroughs, including two fatal hit-and-runs yesterday. A driver in a Subaru Outback killed a 24-year-old cyclist in Manhattan, and a 67-year-old woman died after being struck by a sedan, and then an MTA bus on a Queens roadway. All three of the involved motorists drove off without stopping, cops said.
