3 men killed in parkway crash mourned

The deaths of two former Sewanhaka High football players and their friend in a single-car crash have shaken the Floral Park community, family and friends said Monday.

"This is a hard one to take," said Laurence Reid, a former head football coach.

Sewanhaka grads Brendon McRae, 24, and Naquan Bell, 21, along with Stanley Sagesse, 23, were coming home from a birthday gathering just after 5 a.m. Sunday when McRae drove off the Southern State Parkway into a bridge embankment. All three were killed from injuries sustained in the crash. Police are investigating.

Reid, who coached both Bell and McRae, described McRae - a team captain who started at quarterback his senior year - as "a gamer."

"He had natural ability, and that's something you can't coach," Reid said. Before him, McRae's brother Paul also was a Sewanhaka quarterback.

Though Bell was McRae's nephew, they considered themselves brothers, friends said. In his four years on the team, Bell played several positions, including quarterback his senior year. He graduated in 2008.

Counselors were available at the school Monday.

McRae's father and Bell's grandfather, William McRae of Roosevelt, was distraught Monday, and said the family was still arranging funeral services.

While working with Sagesse as a patient transporter at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, McRae was trying to launch a career as a rapper, calling himself Smoove.

"He cried as she was on his way, basically," said a friend of the trio, Chris Dash, 22, of Baldwin. Sagesse's mother, Margarette Sagesse-Bates, 48, of Hempstead, cried as she described roughhousing with her son. "He was always cracking jokes," she said.

Sagesse, a Uniondale High School grad, was getting ready to take a test to become a police officer in Suffolk County. Dash said he was with.