Dangerous Roads newsletter: When carnage on the Southern State hits close to home

The map that appeared on Newsday.com displaying the location of a six-vehicle crash that killed two people on the Southern State Parkway Sunday night showed the street where I live, the exit I take when driving home and the intersection my wife turns onto each day during her commute.

Police said Diana Kutateladze, of Oceanside, was speeding and driving drunk in the westbound lanes of the parkway when she sideswiped a BMW near Exit 17. Kutateladze, 36, then lost control of her 2020 Cadillac Escalade, drifted over the center median, and hit several other vehicles, including a 2016 Toyota Highlander that she struck head-on, according to police.

Two passengers in the Highlander, Donald Maxwell and Liscent Barbara Maxwell — both leaders of the international Pentecostal City Mission Church and both in their 80s — died at the scene.

Kutateladze, who remained hospitalized Monday, was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, two counts of vehicular manslaughter, felony assault and driving while intoxicated.

A video captured by a witness and shared on social media showed the aftermath: a trail of cars pointing in in all directions, shards of glass and smoke everywhere, crumpled steel, car hoods and bumpers mangled and torn off. Narrating the scene from the passenger’s seat of a car that slowly drives by, a man on the video repeats “Wow” again and again.

“You OK?" the man says to another walking through the crash scene with a limp. “Whoa. This is bad. Oh my God. Jesus.”

There’s something particularly unsettling about a deadly car crash happening near your home. Part of it is the uncertainty of whether you know one of the people involved. Part of it is the thought that you could have been one of them. Part of it is the realization that it could happen again.

Sadly, that last realization is especially true along what police long ago dubbed “Blood Alley” — the 10-mile stretch of the Southern State Parkway roughly between Exits 17 and 31 known for its high rate of deadly crashes. As Newsday reported last year, the Southern State was the site of 42,700 reported crashes over the last decade, more than any other road on Long Island, according to state data.

 The latest deadly crash was the talk of a Valley Stream community Facebook group Monday morning, with members clearly shaken, praying for the victims and expressing gratitude they were not among them.

If a crash can have that profound an impact on people who had nothing to do with it, I can only imagine what those who knew Donald and Liscent Barbara Maxwell are feeling today.

 Althea Reid, choir director at a Brooklyn branch of the Pentecostal City Mission church, described them as “very dedicated, hardworking, people” known affectionately by other churchgoers as Mom and Dad. “It’s a hard blow,” she said.

Updated crash map sneak peek

Newsday has updated its Long Island crash map with data from 2025. We'll have an article about it soon, but you can already see the map by visiting newsday.com/dangerousroads and scrolling about halfway down the page. Crashes are depicted by color-coded dots representing their severity. Zoom in and click on the key at the bottom left to filter for a certain severity level, or use the dropdown menu at the top left to change the year. Our data reporter colleagues here at Newsday warn us that the 2025 map is not final; it could be updated with more crashes as more data is made available from the state transportation department.

Peter Gill, Newsday transportation reporter

What questions do you have for Alfonso Castillo and other Newsday journalists? Do you have ideas for what we should be writing about? Email us at roads@newsday.com

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.