Cops: Another wrong-way driver charged

For the fourth time in a week and the second time since Sunday, police have charged an impaired motorist with driving the wrong way on a Long Island road - but not before the driver hit two vehicles head-on in Calverton, police said.

One of the drivers who was hit suffered non-life-threatening injuries and the other was uninjured, Riverhead Town police said.

Police said the crashes occurred at 5:09 p.m. Tuesday on Route 25 after several motorists called 911 to report a Nissan Altima headed east in the westbound lanes, police said.

Police said officers responding to the 911 calls couldn't reach the scene before Ryan T. McCready crashed the Altima into a 2009 Jeep Grand Cherokee and a 2006 Ford pickup truck.

McCready, 26, of Miller Place, was arrested at the scene and charged with driving while intoxicated by drugs, as well as seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and criminally possessing a hypodermic needle, police said. He was taken to Peconic Bay Medical Center with unspecified injuries.

Police said the Jeep, driven by Serafina Zoda, 52, of Port Jefferson, was sent into an embankment, while the pickup truck, driven by Brian Pina, 30, of Miller Place, remained on the westbound roadway. Zoda was taken to Peconic Bay Medical Center.

The incident is the latest of seven wrong-way incursions in Nassau and Suffolk since Nov. 15. In the previous six cases, the drivers were all headed west in the eastbound lanes. In one of those cases, police said off-duty NYPD officer Andre Menzies was killed by a Brooklyn man with a 0.26 percent blood-alcohol content - more than three times the legal limit of 0.08 percent in New York. That accident was on the Northern State Parkway in Dix Hills.

In the most recent incident before Tuesday's, a Nassau County police Highway Patrol Bureau officer early Sunday was able to stop driver Bernadette Behensky, 20, of Huntington Station, just 100 feet after she turned onto Hempstead Turnpike in East Meadow in the wrong direction in her 2005 Volvo. She was charged with aggravated DWI, DWI, driving the wrong way on a one-way street and numerous vehicle and traffic law violations.