Clarke classmates gather over crash victim

Classmates of 17-year-old Francesco Posillico gathered silently by the dozens Wednesday at the spot on a Westbury street where a car crash took his life and badly injured his two friends.

No one spoke, but their crestfallen faces, hugs and the solemn tone of the impromptu ceremony at Bowling Green Drive and Salisbury Road showed they were crushed. They had lost "Frankie," a popular student at small, intimate W.T. Clarke High School.

Posillico was driving two classmates in a BMW that collided with a Chevrolet Cobalt Tuesday night, killing himself and injuring Joseph Scaperrotta and Daniel Roche, both 16. Police said Posillico ran a stop sign and collided with the other car. They are also investigating whether he was driving at a high rate of speed at the time of the crash.

Police said Roche was in a medically induced coma in critical but stable condition at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, and that Scaperrotta remained in serious condition at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow.

The 24-year-old woman driving the Cobalt was not seriously injured and was treated and released from NUMC.

At the intersection where Posillico lost his life, classmates put up a cross. They spoke fondly of a classmate they said they will always remember.

"He was really funny," said Samantha Penninipede, 17, a senior at the school, who had placed some flowers on the spot earlier in the day. She said she knew Posillico since the sixth grade and last saw him Tuesday morning during their gym class.

"He would pass me the ball when no one else would," she added. "He was just nice to everyone. He was a genuine, good guy."

The sentiment was the same at Westbury Fire Department, where Posillico aspired to serve as a full-fledged firefighter.

"It's a very close-knit force," said First Assistant Fire Chief Douglas Ingram. "It's hit us hard."

Purple and black bunting hung outside the Westbury Fire Department's headquarters Wednesday as the department grappled with the pain of an accident that killed one and seriously injured two other members of its extended family.

Posillico had been a member of the department's Explorers program for teens since he was 14, and planned on becoming a volunteer firefighter as soon as he turned 18, said Ingram.

But all three teenagers had connections to the firehouse: Scaperrotta was also an Explorer. His father, a Westbury firefighter, responded to the crash scene without knowing his son was in the wreckage.

And Roche is a cousin of the department's fire chief, Pat Cody.

Ingram described responding to the accident scene Tuesday evening and urging emergency officials to quickly confirm that the car was, in fact, registered to Posillico.

"Then one of the mothers came up and said, 'I think Joey was in the car,' " he said, shaking his head. "It was a long night."

"I can tell you that it was a horrific scene," said Det. Lt. Raymond Coté.

Police also said that Posillico, who earned a driver's license last summer, had been the driver in two other crashes in September, events that investigators blamed on weather conditions and inexperience. He was not cited in those accidents.

With Yamiche Alcindor, Matthew Chayes and

Emily C. Dooley