Never Promise a Vacation in the Hamptons
You may recall reading about the most astonishing auto accident ever on Long Island. In the middle of a dark night on May 28, a young couple in a bright red Mercedes convertible are traveling at high speed down a residential road in Huntington that was in a T. Straight in front of them is a suburban home occupied by two women in their 90s sleeping in their bedrooms. The young couple goes straight. The Mercedes zips past the stop sign, past the sign with the blinking stop lights at the end of Browns Road, uproots a pine tree, bashes into the front wall of the house, goes into the kitchen and then out the back wall to end up, right side up, on the back lawn near a garden, the pine tree still wrapped over the hood.
The noise wakes the two women. One of them goes to see what is going on, and is confronted by a young man who is standing in what is left of her kitchen. “What are you doing here?” the old lady asks, as reported in Newsday. “I can’t talk to you right now,” the young man replies, “I’ve just been in an accident.” And that’s how things stood when the police and fire trucks arrived to take control of things.
Amazingly, nobody died. Indeed, the young woman who said she had been driving just suffered cuts and bruises. So did her boyfriend. She flunked a breathalyzer test and was charged with DWI. A picture of the huge round hole in the house, car-sized, was taken from the front lawn and published in Newsday. You can see the backyard with the red sports car in it through the hole in the house.
Now, three months later, it turns out, the young woman was not driving. It was the young man who was driving. Bruises on the young woman seen at the hospital showed marks on her right shoulder consistent with a passenger side seatbelt. The blood on the driver’s air bag turned out to be from him, not her. Finally, she confessed.
It turns out that Sophia Anderson, 21, of Brooklyn, was persuaded by her boyfriend of two years, Daniel Sajewski, 23, also of Brooklyn, to cover for him. He had been arrested before, he told her. If they arrest me again here, I will have to go to jail.
“He told me that the authorities would treat me lightly as a first-time offender,” Sophia said, as reported by Newsday. “(He said) that he would post bail for me, pay for my attorney and take me on a promised vacation to the Hamptons. None of these statements were true, and after I was released from jail, he promised that he would accept responsibility and those promises were also not fulfilled. I feel betrayed by a man who I was in love with and lived with for two years.”
Holy Batcave!! A vacation in the Hamptons?? And he reneged??
Sajewski has had four arrests in the last few years. In Suffolk County, he was arrested for selling ecstasy, in Nassau County he was arrested for theft, in Brooklyn he was arrested for criminal possession of marijuana, and again in Brooklyn for driving with a suspended license. It also turns out that the pair were partying in mom and dad’s house in Lloyd Harbor while his parents were away and Sajewski suggested, after some alcohol, that they take his daddy’s red Mercedes convertible for a ride.
Sajewski’s defense attorney, Carl Benincasa of Huntington, when told by Newsday of Anderson’s statement, said “We’re not going to engage in this kind of name calling.” Benincasa also told Newsday that his client “absolutely disputes the people’s recitation of the facts.”
The DWI charge against Anderson has been dropped. Sajewski is in jail facing new charges. His daddy is not bailing him out. The house they roared through is uninhabitable, and the Mercedes is likely junk. And he never did take her to the Hamptons.