Deer Park nail salon crash survivor Krystyna Rodriguez testifies she thought a bomb had exploded

Everyone was screaming and crying. Shards of glass were embedded in her face and arms. The ceiling was collapsing, and broken glass, mangled manicure chairs and other debris were scattered across the room.

The dust was so thick it was hard to see across the room, a Bay Shore woman testified on the first day of testimony in the trial of an alleged drunken driver who crashed into a Deer Park nail salon in June 2024, killing four people.

Krystyna Rodriguez, a regular patron of Hawaii Nail & Spa, told jurors at the trial of Steven Schwally that she originally thought that a bomb had gone off on June 28, 2024. Suffolk County prosecutors said Schwally, 66, was intoxicated when he crossed the street from a neighboring parking lot and crashed his 2020 Chevrolet Traverse into the salon while driving at a high speed. Authorities said he was driving 78 mph just before the crash.

Rodriguez testified that she climbed over the debris and saw an owner of the business, Jian Chai Chen, 37, of Bayside, Queens — also known as Kenny — in the last moments of his life.

"I saw Kenny on the floor. He was foaming at the mouth," Rodriguez said. "He was basically taking his last breaths."

Schwally, charged with four counts of second-degree murder and other charges, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He has twice rejected Supreme Court Justice Richard Ambro’s plea offer of 22 years to life in prison and faces up to 27½ years to life if convicted by the jury. His trial in Riverhead is expected to continue into June.

Off-duty NYPD Officer Emilia Rennhack, 30, of Deer Park, was one of the people killed in the crash, and Ambro's courtroom was filled with law-enforcement personnel, including many wearing NYPD and Suffolk police uniforms, for opening statements delivered by Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Alexander Bopp and defense attorney Christopher Cassar.

Salon employees Yan Xu, 41, and Mei Zi Zhang, 50, both residents of Flushing, Queens, were also killed in the crash, Nine people, including a child, were injured.

Body camera footage from Suffolk Police Officer Michael Marzullo, the first responder to arrive on the scene and the first witness in Schwally’s trial, portrayed the same horror that Rodriguez described to the jury. The video, presented by Suffolk prosecutors, showed dazed survivors asking Marzullo to help their loved ones. Moans and screams filled the air, along with the shrill, near-constant tweet of an alarm.

"Multiple SPI," Marzullo shouted into a radio, later explaining he meant "serious physical injuries."

In his opening statement, Bopp told the jury that a first responder at the scene said Schwally smelled like alcohol and was glassy-eyed as they pulled him out of the Traverse. Schwally’s blood alcohol content was 0.17% — more than twice the legal limit in New York State of 0.8% — hours after the crash.

"His decision [to drink and drive] turned a beautiful day into one of death and carnage," Bopp said.

Schwally "ripped through like a missile" and then demanded that first responders help him out of the wreckage in the salon he had just "obliterated," Bopp said, even as emergency crews tended to the injured and dead around him.

"At no point did he express concern for people he had just run over," Bopp said.

Cassar said that Schwally, who needed a walker to enter and exit the courtroom, had a leg disability that prevented him from moving his foot off the gas pedal. 

The attorney disputed allegations that Schwally was drunk, noting that he was not swaying or tripping in surveillance video that recorded the defendant earlier in the day.

"What they are claiming is inconsistent with the facts," Cassar told the jury.

The blood sample prosecutors claim is evidence that Schwally was drunk, was tainted by rubbing alcohol used by a healthcare professional at Good Samaritan University Hospital where the defendant was taken after the crash, according to Cassar.

Bopp said Schwally left his room at the Commack Motor Inn on the morning of the crash and bought two 375-milliliter bottles of Montebello Long Island Iced Tea Cocktail from a liquor store next to the nail salon. He allegedly drove around the area where the crash later occurred after buying the alcohol from the store, where financial records show he was a daily customer, prosecutors have said.

Testimony in the trial is scheduled to resume on Tuesday.