Dirt bike rider sentenced for upstate crash that severely injured University at Albany student from Floral Park
Alexa Kropf reads from her victim impact statement during the sentencing of hit-and-run driver Austin Breyette on Tuesday at the Albany County Judicial Center in Albany. Credit: Times Union/Will Waldron
An upstate New York dirt bike rider who struck and severely injured a Floral Park teen just days away from finishing her freshman year at University at Albany was sentenced Tuesday to 7 1/3 to 12 years in state prison.
Austin Breyette, 27, of Watervliet, a small town north of Albany, was convicted after a seven-day jury trial last October of assault, leaving the scene of an incident and two counts of tampering with physical evidence, according to court records
In court, Alexa Kropf, 19 at the time of the April 26, 2024, crash, told Breyette: "Because of you, my life is permanently altered, my future is uncertain and I’m left living inside a body that no longer feels like mine," according to a release from Albany County District Attorney Lee C. Kindlon’s office.
Shortly after the crash, when Breyette’s identity was still unknown, Albany City police said in a news release about the incident that an unnamed woman had been struck by a man driving "at a high rate of speed while weaving in and out of groups of people."
During the trial, prosecutors showed video of Breyette riding on the night of the crash through Albany’s Pine Hills neighborhood. They said he drove the wrong way on Hudson Avenue before making a U-turn, accelerating speeds of up to 50 mph before encountering a group of University at Albany students, including Kropf, and striking her there.
Kropf’s father, New York City public school teacher Jim Kropf, said in a phone interview that the family was relieved to get "closure" but that sentencing did not make them whole again. "There is never going to be enough time served in our minds for what my daughter will have to go through for the rest of her life," he said.
Jim Kropf said his daughter was still in pain from her injuries, which included brain swelling, two compound fractures of her lower right leg, pelvis fractures, broken ribs and bruised lungs. "She thinks about, does this affect her life span? ‘Will I ever get better, will I ever be 100%, where I’m at now, is this all I’m going to be?’ She kind of misses the person she once was."
Alexa Kropf has resumed her studies but is unable to physically attend classes, he said.
In an April 2024 interview with Newsday, Jim Kropf said of the then-unknown driver, "If he has any decency as a human being, he should step forward and own up to this horrible act."
Kropf said Tuesday that Breyette had never done that. "I don’t find him to be very much of a man," he said. "He tried to show some remorse in court today but the only remorse I feel he had is that he’s sorry for being caught."
A lawyer for Breyette, Jasper Lee Mills III, could not be reached for comment.
According to court records, Albany City police arrested Breyette May 23, 2024. In an interview, Kindlon said the Capital Region Crime Analysis Center, a partnership between local law enforcement and the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, had helped track Breyette’s movements on the night of the crash using license plate readers and surveillance video.
Investigators saw that Breyette was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with his Instagram handle on it on the night of the crash. They found other material on his social media that related to "Bike Life" centered around group rides on ATVs and dirt bikes that often take place on urban streets and are illegal in many cities, including Albany and New York City, where off-road vehicles are not permitted on public streets.
"They thought they were this new breed of outlaw that couldn’t be contained," Kindlon said. "If the defense was going to come forward with this gosh golly shucks argument, that this was just an accident, we were really able to show the counter-message of perhaps why he did what he did and ran."
Kindlon said that the Albany police and Albany County sheriff’s departments had cracked down on illegal riding. "You can see how behavior like this can lead to some really awful consequences," he said. "This incident hangs heavy over the city of Albany."
Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.
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