Officer who ran over man in Queens park won’t be charged in his death

Officer Levonje Devone won’t be charged in the death of Erasmo Huerta Gonzalez, who was laying in a road in Flushing Meadows Corona Park when Devone ran over him with her police car last August.  Screenshot via NYAG

By Jacob Kaye

The NYPD officer who ran over a man lying in a roadway in Flushing Meadows Corona Park last year will not be charged in his death, the New York State attorney general’s office said this week.

Levonje Devone, an NYPD officer in Queens’ 109th Precinct, won’t face criminal charges after she ran over Erasmo Huerta Gonzalez with a patrol car in August of last year.

New York Attorney General Letitia James’ Office of Special Investigation said that a prosecutor would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Devone committed a crime when she struck Huerta Gonzalez with the car on Aug. 23.

“The collision appeared to be an accident rather than criminal conduct,” the AG’s report read.

Devone, who refused to speak with investigators from the AG’s office about the incident, was patrolling the park for quality-of-life issues alongside her partner, Keisha Compere, on the day of the crash.

With both the U.S. Open underway and a Mets game scheduled for the day, the park was busy.

According to the AG’s office, two unnamed Mets employees spotted Huerta Gonzalez sleeping on a wall by the Queens Theater around 3:30 p.m. They returned an hour later and saw that he had moved to the roadway. One of the Mets workers then texted a police sergeant a photo of the man.

A few minutes later, Devone and Compere turned onto the road but not in response to the alert about the man laying in the street. According to the investigation, Devone appeared to have a tube of lip gloss and one headphone in her ear as she drove onto the street. The sun also allegedly was shining directly into the officers eyes.

Though they were driving slowly, neither officer picked up on the civilians and a nearby NYPD lieutenant yelling at them to stop driving.

The officer rolled over Huerta Gonzalez with the front tires and then stopped the car.

With the man pinned beneath the car, both officers got out of the vehicle and attempted to free Huerta Gonzalez, who was lucid immediately after the crash.

Around 10 minutes after Huerta Gonzalez was struck, medics were able to pull him out from under the car and get him into an ambulance. While he was responsive when he first got in the ambulance, his condition quickly deteriorated.

He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital around 30 minutes after the crash.

According to the AG, Devone was driving around 7 miles per hour at the time of the crash and was not using her cell phone.

A medical examiner later determined that Huerta Gonzalez died of blunt force trauma to his torso.