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Now it could be on the hook for tens of millions.","teaserOvertitle":null,"text":"Experts say the case highlights how a failure to improve roadways can leave taxpayers liable for damages and legal bills.","longText":"","customLogo":null,"media":{"__typename":"Image","id":"contentid/86e400c0-5e23-489e-9357-72770dd35901","width":2100,"height":1319,"title":"Copy Of inCRASH261025_photos","headline":"","baseUrl":"https://cdn.newsday.com/image-service/version/c:MmQxMDgyMjAtMjAxNi00:NzVjMWU0MDMtODcwMS00/copy-of-incrash261025_photos.jpg","caption":"At least two people hurt in serious crash with pedestrians hit on Dutch Broadway in Elmont.","altTag":"","byline":"Howard Schnapp","organization":"","floatLeft":false,"floatRight":false,"imageSize":null,"useFreeform":false},"content":{"__typename":"Article","id":"contentid/56218f1d-b353-40b3-93af-dddd9b74b7c7","lead":"Experts say the case highlights how a failure to improve roadways can leave taxpayers liable for damages and legal bills.","body":"

It was the afternoon of Halloween, and students were walking out of Elmont Memorial High School when two cars at the intersection collided.

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One car accelerated and slammed head-on into a third. The other car careened onto the sidewalk and struck a utility pole, a tree and a group of students walking from school, among them two 10th graders: Natali Cruz and Sidney Garcon Jonathan.

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That Oct. 31, 2018, crash left the girls, who were both 15 at the time, with severe, lifelong injuries. Earlier this year, a jury found Nassau County, in addition to the two drivers, was responsible for Cruz’s injuries — leaving the county facing a nearly $70 million jury verdict, reportedly among the largest in county history.

The scene of the 2018 crash on Dutch Broadway in Elmont that left Natali Cruz and Sidney Garcon Jonathan with lifelong injuries. \n

Jurors decided Nassau County was negligent because it failed to study or make safety improvements to Dutch Broadway, the county-owned road where the crash happened, despite a series of prior crashes and years of warnings. A separate trial involving Garcon Jonathan is scheduled to begin in November, meaning the county could have to pay millions more.

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Experts say the case highlights how local governments’ failure to improve roadways — in a region with a disproportionate number of serious crashes — can leave taxpayers responsible for tens of millions of dollars in damage and legal bills.

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And it raises concern about the effectiveness of Nassau County’s roadway improvement program, after an engineer for the county testified at trial that the county has a yearslong backlog for conducting traffic safety studies.

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\"It's a question of spend money now or spend money later,\" Michael Shenoda, a professor of traffic engineering at Farmingdale State University, said in an interview.

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[The intersection] may be busy, but it's well-maintained.

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— Vincent McNamara, attorney representing Nassau County

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For years, advocates and lawmakers had called on the county to study whether changes to lane markings, turning rules, roadway width, speed signage or other elements could make the crossing safer. But officials conducted no formal safety study until after the 2018 crash.

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\"The tens of millions of dollars they could be on the hook for now would have been much better spent addressing some of the issues,\" Shenoda said.

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The county, which is seeking to overturn the verdict, argued the roadway was safe and that the drivers were entirely to blame for the crash.

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The intersection \"may be busy, but it's well-maintained,\" attorney Vincent McNamara, representing Nassau, told jurors. \"It's got cross-hatchings. It's got pedestrian signals. It's got a crossing guard.\"

STORYWIDGET: inCRASH261025_scrolly \n

‘Total shock’

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Cruz and Garcon Jonathan were best friends who lived on the same street and walked to and from Elmont High most days.

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Cruz was an athlete on the school’s lacrosse and soccer teams. Garcon Jonathan dreamed of becoming a writer and journalist.

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Because of their brain injuries, neither remembers the crash, they testified. Traffic cameras and home surveillance video captured the moment the car plowed into them.

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That afternoon, the girls had left the high school and were walking east on Dutch Broadway. Across the busy intersection, a black Acura driven by then 51-year-old Console Ifezulumba, a parent on her way to pick up her own children, attempted to pull out of the right-hand lane and collided with a silver Lexus driven by a woman, Carrie Morris, who was 91 at the time.

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Dutch Broadway has no dedicated right-turn lane at that stoplight, and Ifezulumba was attempting to go around a car waiting for students who were crossing Elmont Road.

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\"All I heard was bam, like that, and you know, I was in total shock,\" Ifezulumba testified at the trial. \"I was just screaming Jesus, Jesus.\"

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Both cars were going relatively slowly at first, then accelerated. Morris crashed head-on into a car waiting at the stoplight, while Ifezulumba sped about 200 feet across the intersection, onto the sidewalk and into a tree, a utility pole and a group of students.

STORYWIDGET: inCRASH261025_timeline \n

Ifezulumba’s attorneys argued at trial that she experienced \"pedal confusion\" — meaning she stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake — after the first collision.

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Attorneys for Ifezulumba did not respond to requests for comment. An attorney for the estate of Morris, who died in 2024, declined to comment. Police did not charge anyone in connection to the crash.

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Nassau police said four students were injured, Cruz and Garcon Jonathan most critically. Cruz suffered a traumatic brain injury, with lasting effects on her cognition, balance, memory and emotions. Now 23, she is \"at high risk of permanent unemployment\" and will need lifelong medical care, according to medical records filed in court.

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The county knew there was this dangerous condition there, and the county did absolutely nothing.

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— Charles Wisell, attorney representing Natali Cruz

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Garcon Jonathan, also 23, sustained a traumatic brain injury as well, in addition to multiple severe broken bones in her face, according to her attorneys. She testified at the trial that she is now a sociology major and works with children with disabilities.

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And yet, \"she has crushing, debilitating injuries,\" Peter Thomas, an attorney representing her, said in an interview.

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The intersection

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The crash was not the first time Dutch Broadway and Elmont Road had raised alarms.

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The busy crossing, just east of the Queens-Nassau border, abuts Elmont Memorial High School, St. Boniface Catholic Church, a park, a funeral home and a Walgreens.

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Documents filed with the court show that community members — including two police captains and a priest at St. Boniface — had been contacting county authorities as far back as 1977, expressing concerns about the two roads and asking for improvements.

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Between 2015 and 2018, Nassau County officials recorded 107 crashes at the crossing, according to court records. In 2015 and 2016, a 12-year-old girl and a 19-year-old woman were hit and killed in the span of six months within a quarter-mile of the crossing, and a cyclist was killed at the intersection in 2012, according to a federal crash database.

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\"Maybe due to the fact that there are people traveling here from other communities, from Queens and Brooklyn, and they don't know the rules of the road — I don't know — or there's not enough education, or engineering, or enforcement,\" Nassau Legis. Carrié Solages, a Valley Stream Democrat, said of the intersection in an interview.

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\"But altogether, it was a dangerous road,\" he said.

Nassau Legis. Carrié Solages wrote to officials requesting a study and safety improvements for the Elmont intersection before the crash occurred. \n

In the three years before the 2018 crash, Solages wrote eight letters to the county’s department of public works, police and then-county executives Ed Mangano and Laura Curran requesting a study and safety improvements for Dutch Broadway and Elmont Road.

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An attorney for Mangano, who is serving a federal prison sentence for an unrelated public corruption conviction, declined to comment. Curran, who took office 10 months before the crash, did not respond to a request for comment.

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Charles Wisell, an attorney for Cruz, said in an interview Nassau \"ignored\" years of warnings about the roadway.

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\"The county knew there was this dangerous condition there, and the county did absolutely nothing,\" he said.

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After the 2018 crash, the Town of Hempstead moved to lower the speed limit on Dutch Broadway near the high school from 30 mph to 20 mph, Newsday reported at the time.

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But Nassau County did not complete a traffic study until 2020. It later implemented a number of safety improvements, including reducing lane widths, adding traffic and pedestrian signals, installing digital speed feedback signs and creating dedicated turning lanes.

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As the county and town made those improvements, the intersection's crash rate, adjusted for traffic volume, trended downward. There were roughly half the number of crashes in 2024 as in 2018, according to state Department of Transportation data, though 2023 saw a spike.

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Since 2020, the county legislature has approved at least $3.25 million for traffic safety improvements along Dutch Broadway. County officials did not respond to questions about how much was actually spent in the vicinity of the intersection where Cruz and Garcon Jonathan were injured.

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Most of the changes were made along the two county roads leading up to the crash intersection, rather than at the crossing itself — a fact the county's attorneys have pointed to in arguing that engineering fixes could not have prevented the crash.

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\"We all live in Nassau County. It's not news to you,\" McNamara told jurors during the trial. \"Any major intersection has a lot of accidents.\"

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A yearslong backlog

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The case has raised questions about how Nassau County handles complaints and concerns about roadways.

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Harold Lutz, the county’s director of traffic engineering, testified that although Nassau had funds set aside for traffic studies, it did not conduct one at Elmont and Dutch Broadway before the crash because of a yearslong backlog for studies around the county.

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The intersection’s history of crashes — 107 in three years — was not unusually high for a busy crossing, Lutz added.

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State traffic data shows at least 20 other intersections involving county roads recorded more crashes than the Elmont crossing from 2016 through 2018, although those intersections may have had differing levels of vehicle and pedestrian traffic. 

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Shenoda, the Farmingdale State University professor, told Newsday that given its proximity to the school and history of crashes, the Elmont crossing deserved more attention from authorities. 

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\"This intersection seemed like it was screaming for a study and some mitigation,\" he said.

STORYWIDGET: inCRASH261025_shenodacard \n

At the time of the crash, the county faced a long waitlist of traffic safety complaints, as well as an acute lack of engineers and other public works staff to investigate them, Newsday reported in 2019.

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At the time, Nassau officials said there were nearly 1,300 open complaints. County officials did not respond to questions about how many there are today.

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But staffing concerns still persist. According to county payroll data, Nassau County’s department of public works had only five traffic engineers on staff in 2018. In 2025 it had eight, which is still less than the roughly 15 recommended by federal guidelines for a department its size, although many road departments nationwide fall short of the benchmarks, according to Peter Yauch, an engineer with the Washington-based Institute of Transportation Engineers.

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While departments often contract private firms for traffic safety studies, as Nassau did in this case, county engineers are needed to conduct oversight, Shenoda said.

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The county has paid out several multimillion-dollar settlements in cases alleging roadway safety flaws, including $8.4 million to a motorcyclist who was severely injured in a 2014 crash in Port Washington and $25 million to a woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a 2007 Oceanside crash.

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Cruz’s lawsuit \"is a classic negligence case,\" Benjamin Zipursky, a Fordham School of Law professor, said in an interview. \"It's a problem that people have identified. A company or a government or something just didn't want to spend the money to fix it.\"

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Jury awards $97 million 

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After trial proceedings that spanned roughly a month this spring, the six-person jury ruled Ifezulumba, whose car struck the children, was 70% responsible for the crash. The county was 27% responsible and Morris, the other driver, was 3% responsible, jurors found.

\n

In total, the jury awarded approximately $97 million to Cruz. According to the New York Law Journal, it was the largest verdict in the state in 2026 and the second-largest in Nassau County history.

\n

Because the county bears at least some responsibility, it would be on the hook for the most money, about $68 million, while insurance carriers for the drivers would have to pay far less even though jurors found one of them more responsible.

A jury awarded Natali Cruz, pictured here before the 2018 crash, an approximately $97 million verdict. \n

The way state civil litigation law is written can leave government agencies, which have the most resources, to cover the majority of economic damages — such as medical costs and lost income — even when other parties are deemed more at fault. In this case, Nassau faces the largest bill because the drivers' insurance policies are limited, according to the plaintiffs' lawyers.

\n

As for noneconomic damages — which includes the difficult-to-quantify pain and suffering — Nassau County, which was found to be 27% at fault for the crash, would be required to pay only 27% of those damages.

\n

But any payments from the county may not come for some time. McNamara, the attorney representing Nassau, has asked the judge who heard the case to overturn the jury’s verdict, which is \"absolutely beyond belief,\" McNamara said at a hearing earlier this month.

\n

New York Supreme Court Justice Leonard Steinman has not yet ruled on that request. But if he declines, the county could appeal to a state appellate court, further prolonging the case.

\n

Meanwhile, the case of Garcon Jonathan is scheduled for trial in late November.

\n

Crucially, that trial is only concerned with damages: Because the liability for the crash was already decided, the only thing left to determine is how much Garcon Jonathan is owed by the county and the other drivers. Thomas, her lawyer, said he expects another multimillion-dollar verdict.

\n

\"We're going to get a verdict for full value,\" he said.

\n

Newsday's Arielle Martinez contributed to this story.

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Two children arrived at Northwell Health facilities with alarming symptoms. One had swelling consistent with mumps, the other a severe neck abscess requiring immediate care.

\n

Their parents insisted both had been vaccinated. State records appeared to confirm it.

\n

But blood tests told a different story. Neither child had immunity to highly contagious diseases including mumps, measles and hepatitis B.

\n

Their parents had refused shots by their children's regular pediatricians and instead took their kids to the same Amityville provider, nurse practitioner Julie DeVuono, to obtain immunization records.

\n

Doctors filed urgent complaints with state regulators, warning of apparent child vaccination fraud. One called it \"a huge public health concern\" and wrote, \"She must be investigated, license revoked, and punished to the fullest extent of the law.\"

\n

Those warnings had little impact.

\n

For the next three years, DeVuono continued to operate Wild Child Pediatrics, claiming to administer thousands of childhood vaccinations, even as questions about her pediatric records mounted — and even as authorities later uncovered a separate $1.2-million scheme involving fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards.

\n

A Newsday investigation found that despite early warnings of an alleged fraudulent pediatric vaccine operation that experts say would be among the largest in recent U.S. history, state regulators failed to stop DeVuono's practice. The investigation also found the Suffolk district attorney chose to not criminally investigate those allegations, despite urging by health officials.

STORYWIDGET: INVAX260419_complainttear \n

The state Education Department has the power to suspend or revoke nurses' licenses. But 18 months after the doctors' complaints, it fined her $500 — for incomplete record keeping in seven cases — while allowing her to keep submitting immunization records for kids to attend school.

\n

DeVuono only stopped practicing when Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney's office secured her conviction in the COVID-19 case, which authorities stumbled upon when DeVuono herself called police to her office following a client dispute over money.

\n

Through a public records request filed with the Suffolk District Attorney's Office in 2024, Newsday in December obtained thousands of pages of records, undercover video files and audio recordings that provide the most complete accounting of DeVuono’s case. She surrendered her New York nursing licenses and closed her Wild Child pediatric practice as part of a 2023 plea agreement in which she admitted forging thousands of COVID-19 vaccine cards. She also pleaded guilty to submitting an oxycodone prescription for herself in the name of her brother. A judge sentenced her to community service.

\n

The case put DeVuono at the forefront of the antivaccination movement on Long Island, a group skeptical of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and that believes vaccine requirements are an infringement on personal rights. The movement, which started on the political fringes of both parties, has gained new prominence with the rise of President Donald Trump, who appointed avowed vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

\n

Today, the extent of DeVuono's alleged fraud is still not known. State investigators have invalidated an unknown number of children's proofs of immunization and are pursuing a noncriminal administrative case against DeVuono, accusing her of falsifying more than 1,500 vaccine records, which could result in millions of dollars in fines.

\n

Families also provided Long Island school districts with DeVuono-stamped vaccine records after her arrest, court records show, including in the weeks before she agreed to surrender her nursing licenses in the 2023 COVID fraud plea deal with Suffolk prosecutors.

\n

Although state regulators lauded the removal of her licenses, they thought Suffolk prosecutors should have done more. In a January 2024 email, the state Health Department’s director of investigations criticized prosecutors for not looking into their allegations that DeVuono also committed childhood vaccine fraud.

STORYWIDGET: INVAX_pq1 \n

Noting they had found evidence that her alleged fraud began in 2019 — and that they had raised concerns early in its COVID criminal case — the Health Department's investigations director, Joseph Giovannetti, wrote: \"It’s our understanding ... your office never investigated it.\"

\n

A spokeswoman for Tierney’s office confirmed to Newsday they did not launch an investigation into those allegations because prosecutors believed they did not receive enough evidence to bring criminal charges.

\n

In an interview, Tierney said prosecuting pediatric vaccine fraud beyond a reasonable doubt is difficult. He questioned why the state allowed DeVuono to continue practicing even though state regulators received allegations of pediatric vaccine fraud years before his office got involved.

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\"If it was so cut and dry, why was it left for us to physically take her license from her at the time of sentencing?\" Tierney said in response to the state's criticism.

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Education Department spokeswoman Rachel Connors said in a statement that even when there is a plea deal, the Board of Regents, which oversees the department, ultimately decides whether to accept a license surrender and stop someone from practicing. The board formally took her license in December 2023, three months after her plea.

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Health Department spokeswoman Erin Clary said in a statement: \"The Department made considerable, documented efforts to convince the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office to include the pediatric vaccination fraud in its prosecution, and it declined.\"

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The health and education departments cannot directly file criminal charges, but they can refer cases to the state attorney general's office. Asked why the office did not refer DeVuono's case, Clary said, \"DeVuono had already been successfully prosecuted by the Suffolk County DA’s Office, the same office that led the investigation from the beginning and holds key evidence to the case.\"

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DeVuono, who now lives in Pennsylvania, could not be reached for comment. Her attorney in the COVID-19 case, Jason Russo, has said DeVuono told him she never falsified pediatric vaccination records.

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The Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement this month that DeVuono doesn’t have a Pennsylvania nursing license and hasn’t applied for one.

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'Ripe for investigation'

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The Education Department had previously disciplined DeVuono because pediatric immunization records she submitted for seven children in 2019 lacked basic information such as dosage amounts, the manufacturer and expiration dates.

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To close that case, DeVuono accepted a \"censure and reprimand,\" paid a $500 fine and did not contest the charges. The 2021 settlement agreement makes no reference to vaccine fraud or the complaints filed by doctors in 2020.

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Connors, the Education Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality.

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The Health Department said it referred complaints about DeVuono to the Education Department for potential discipline because it did not yet have its own investigations bureau until the fall of 2023, several months before it filed administrative charges against DeVuono alleging fraud.

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Vaccine and public health experts found fault with both the state regulators, for failing to stop DeVuono sooner, and with the district attorney's office, for not pursuing a criminal investigation into alleged pediatric vaccine fraud.

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Brian Dean Abramson, a vaccine law professor at University of Houston Law Center, said two physicians separately accusing a nurse of falsifying immunization records should immediately raise red flags and be viewed as credible.

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\"It would be very surprising if that sort of accusation were to arise and there was nothing actually supporting it,\" he said.

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After receiving the complaints, the Education Department should have at least tried to stop DeVuono from continuing to submit vaccination records until it could investigate further, he said.

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State law allows the department to temporarily bar a provider from practicing before the resolution of a case if \"the public health, safety or welfare imperatively requires emergency action.\"

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Abramson said vaccine fraud fits that description.

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\"Pediatric vaccine fraud is one of the most pernicious crimes that can occur in our society, because we vaccinate children to protect them from diseases that are known to be deadly,\" he said.

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Abramson also said that the allegations of pediatric fraud were \"ripe for an investigation\" by Tierney’s office.

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New charges would have discouraged other unscrupulous providers from falsifying records, Abramson said. \"It's rare for it to be caught and rarer still to be prosecuted criminally,\" he added.

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Even if a district attorney’s office has the same evidence as a state agency, prosecutors could decline to file criminal charges because its burden of proof is much higher than administrative cases, said John Quinn, a professor at the Touro University law school in Central Islip.

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In addition, taking away a defendant’s ability to practice medicine \"might be enough to satisfy [his] goals,\" said Clayton Masterman, a University at Buffalo law school professor.

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'Lives that could be endangered'

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The state senator who sponsored a 2019 bill that ended religious and other nonmedical exemptions for school vaccination requirements following major measles outbreaks said getting DeVuono to surrender her licenses wasn't enough.

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\"The book should be thrown at anyone who is so reckless as to intentionally fabricate a record that is meant to protect the public health,\" said Brad Hoylman-Sigal, now the Manhattan borough president. \"There are literally lives that could be endangered as a result.\"

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Falsification of pediatric vaccine cards affects more than unvaccinated children, said Dr. Jennifer Duchon, a Manhattan-based pediatric epidemiologist for the Mount Sinai Health System.

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Children — especially those with weakened immune systems and babies too young to get vaccines — can get severely ill from vaccine-preventable diseases, she said.

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State records show DeVuono only began administering childhood vaccines after the state ended nonmedical exemptions in 2019.

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She reported giving children more than 7,500 vaccines over a two-year span — after 17 years of having never reported administering a vaccine.

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Customer dispute leads to police call

Prosecutors said DeVuono made more than $1.2 million by selling fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards. \n

DeVuono might still be practicing today if she didn’t call the police in October 2021 to remove an \"unruly\" customer from her office, tipping the authorities off to her lucrative COVID-19 vaccine card scheme.

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The customer, identified in records as Thomas Laviano, of Sag Harbor, told police he had paid DeVuono $200 a month earlier to receive the COVID card with the first dose listed, without ever receiving the shot. He didn’t expect to be asked to pay another $220 when he returned for the second appointment in October 2021.

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That led to an argument that got so heated DeVuono called police to have him removed from her office.

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When an Amityville village officer arrived, records show, DeVuono explained that she had been administering COVID-19 shots \"along with a holistic way that rids the body of the vaccine\" and charges patients $220 each time. According to the police report, Laviano would not pay, and they argued.

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In a telephone interview with Newsday in March, Laviano, 71, said, \"she charged me twice, and I was arguing with her that it's not right, and then she called a cop on me because I got a little agitated.\"

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But Laviano also expressed sympathy for DeVuono, saying, \"she helped a lot of people\" by allowing them to receive COVID-19 cards without getting the vaccine at a time when many workplaces and indoor events required proof of vaccination.

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\"My hat’s off to her,\" he said.

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Before Amityville police left the scene in 2021, records show, an anonymous bystander told the officer that people often line up outside DeVuono’s office, and one of them told her they were there getting fake vaccine cards.

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Amityville police referred the case that day to Suffolk police and the district attorney's office, records show.

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A day later, Laviano provided a statement to a Suffolk detective detailing how he scored an appointment with DeVuono.

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Having learned of DeVuono’s sham vaccine-card operation from a friend, he said he expressed his interest by texting her with the code word: \"Smilari 62.\" The records do not explain the significance of the code word.

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Weeks later, DeVuono told a client in her office, \"We found out that there is a file with our name on it on the desk of the Suffolk County D.A., and they are planning to send someone out undercover.\" She said she thought about stopping, but decided to limit her practice to \"known people.\"

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That exchange is caught on video — by an undercover police detective sitting a few feet away in the waiting room.

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Charges never came

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Suffolk police arrested DeVuono in January 2022 for the COVID vaccine fraud, three months after her 911 phone call.

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It was a Thursday night. Three days later, on a Sunday, state health investigators emailed Suffolk prosecutors \"flagging the issue of non-covid vaccination fraud.\"

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Another 20 months passed before DeVuono agreed to the plea deal with Tierney’s office. Giovannetti said in a statement provided by a Health Department spokeswoman that the department's investigations bureau \"actively encouraged the DA’s office to include [pediatric vaccination fraud] in its charges.\"

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Those charges never came.

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\"We obtained no legally competent evidence with which to initiate an investigation,\" Tierney spokeswoman Tania Lopez said in a statement.

DeVuono with her attorney Jason Russo in 2023. \n

Authorities also alleged DeVuono prescribed thousands of oxycodone pills at Long Island pharmacies between 2016 and 2021 in the names of two family members who lived in different states — unbeknownst to them, they said — and her grandmother, who died in 1980. Tierney's office said in a statement that there was no evidence she was selling oxycodone. DeVuono was undergoing substance abuse treatment at the time of her sentencing, court records show.

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In December 2023, three months after DeVuono pleaded guilty, Newsday reported the Health Department was investigating her for pediatric vaccine fraud. In that story, the Suffolk district attorney’s office said, \"There was no evidence that anyone received non-COVID fake immunization cards\" from Wild Child.

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That statement shocked state health investigators.

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Its director of investigations, Giovannetti, who also is an attorney, wrote in an email to prosecutors, \"The statement implies that the question was investigated by your office and a determination made.\"

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In an interview, Tierney said his office’s 2023 statement to Newsday that they had \"no evidence\" of non-COVID vaccine fraud referred to \"evidence that we could use\" in a criminal case.

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The issue emerged at the start of DeVuono's June 2024 sentencing hearing when Suffolk state Supreme Court Justice John Collins said he received a presentencing letter from the Health Department.

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Noting that the letter alleged DeVuono falsified 226 childhood vaccine records for \"at least\" 26 children in 2020 and 2021, the judge asked prosecutors if they \"intend to undertake an investigation of those allegations,\" according to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by Newsday.

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Assistant District Attorney James Bartens said, \"Of course we will look at whatever evidence they have come about, but as of this point we are not privy to their investigation as far as what evidence they have procured.\"

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The judge stopped him midsentence, and asked, \"Did you get the same paperwork I got?\" Bartens initially said he didn't think so — \"Come on,\" the judge said, incredulously — before Bartens found it on his desk.

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Then he said: \"This was not a complete shock and we have been aware of the Department of Health’s investigation into this matter.\"

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Tierney told Newsday in the recent interview he remains open to prosecuting DeVuono for pediatric vaccine fraud — if he has enough evidence. But, he said, prosecutors would need an informant or other witness who was in the room with DeVuono and the child patient as she was committing a fraudulent act, such as administering a \"false vaccine.\"

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Abramson, the vaccine law professor, said although someone who witnessed DeVuono committing a fraudulent act in the room with patients would strengthen a case, it wouldn’t be necessary for a successful prosecution.

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Under the plea deal Tierney's office reached with DeVuono in the COVID-19 case, she surrendered her nursing licenses, was required to forfeit more than $1.25 million and promised to serve 840 hours of community service, in lieu of six months' jail time.

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Giovannetti, who the health department said was not available for an interview, said in the statement that although the agency was unsuccessful in its efforts to convince Tierney to file pediatric vaccination fraud charges, \"There is no doubt that the DA’s Office protected public health and safety in Long Island by ensuring that Julie DeVuono will never practice medicine in New York again.\"

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