Man gets 5-15 years for fatal road rage incident

Long Island

Even two years after her son Igor died, Irena Kruk said she still goes to his bedroom every night, expecting that he will be there.

"I'm left in this world alone, without anyone," Kruk cried Monday in Nassau County Court. "I don't have anyone to live for now."

Kruk asked Nassau County Judge Meryl Berkowitz to sentence Patrick DeJean, the man who was convicted of manslaughter for killing her son in a road rage crash in 2005, to 5 to 15 years in prison for his crime -- the maximum allowable sentence. Berkowitz obliged.

Addressing DeJean, Berkowitz scolded him for failing to have the courage to take responsibility for what he did.

"No one but you got behind the wheel of that car," Berkowitz said. "No one but you hit the motorcycle Igor Kruk rode. And no one but you broke him into a rag doll, so his brain was pushed out of his skull," she said.

DeJean, 41, of Uniondale, was convicted last fall of second-degree manslaughter for the death of Igor Kruk in September 2005.

Prosecutors and police said DeJean, who had pleaded guilty to a similar crime in 2001 after he ran over his then-girlfriend, became enraged in the September 2005 incident after Kruk and another motorcyclist passed him on a street in Uniondale. They said DeJean then pursued the two motorcyclists at speeds of more than 70 mph before striking Kruk and pushing the cyclist and his 2004 Yamaha 150 feet, crushing Kruk against a parked Kia Sportage and killing him.

"The only difference between this and your garden variety murder," Nassau County prosecutor Ken St. Bernard had told the jury in the case, "was his choice of weapon. But an automobile in his hands is nothing less than a guided missile."

The prosecutor said that DeJean did not brake before he hit Kruk and that he was going fast enough to push the bike and Kia an additional 40 feet.

Joe LoPiccolo, the Garden City lawyer who represented DeJean, said during the trial there was "no evidence of road rage" in the incident.

The jury considered murder charges before convicting DeJean of manslaughter.


Careful out there, everyone.