Memorials left alongside the Southern State Parkway offer a glimpse of the enduring pain familes deal with, as the parkway is considered one of deadliest on Long Island. Newsday TV's Shari Einhorn reports.   Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca; Debbie Egan-Chin

A garden blooms along a bend on the Southern State Parkway near Exit 41A, marking the lives of two young women killed in a car accident 17 years ago.

JoAnna Falbo, 21, died at the crash scene on that Sunday in April, and her friend, Karinda Eginton, 20, was pronounced dead later at a local hospital. It was a damp morning, around 7:30, and the roads were slick as Falbo, driving a Honda Accord, headed east on the Southern State with Eginton in the passenger seat, Falbo's family said. When Falbo approached a fork at the exit, the car struck a median, hydroplaned and went off the right shoulder into a tree.

Now, every spring, tulips poke through the accident site, followed by lilacs, roses and daisies. The display was started by Falbo’s mother, Ania Falbo, in 2006 and is among more than two dozen roadside memorials recently spotted alongside Long Island’s main highways. The tributes are a grim reminder of the dangers of the Island's roadways.

There were 535 people killed in 462 crashes on the Island’s four major freeways from 2001 to 2021, including more than 200 killed on the Southern State, a Newsday analysis of police and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data found. The review covered the Long Island Expressway, Southern State, Meadowbrook and Northern State parkways in Nassau and Suffolk counties. 

State Police said unsafe speed caused Falbo's 2005 accident, but the family blamed what it described as a treacherous interchange on the Southern State that begins with four lanes on the parkway widening to five as traffic merges from the Robert Moses Causeway.

The Southern State's two left lanes then branch into the Sagtikos Parkway. Drivers in a second-to-left lane can swing onto either parkway, an option highlighted by a double-arrow yellow sign on a median. Falbo was in that lane continuing on the Southern State when the accident happened, her family said. 

“Even before I had JoAnna, I remember driving that split and thinking, ‘Oh my God.’ There are people coming from Robert Moses and then there are three lanes of traffic to merge to the Sagtikos Parkway. Going through five lanes in a very, very short distance is dangerous, and I believe someone cut JoAnna off,” Ania Falbo, of East Meadow, said in an interview. 

The memorials along the freeways, whether stark or ornate, cast a light on lives cut short and offer families a place to mourn. At JoAnna's spot, Ania Falbo often takes out a stool to sit and pray as cars hurtle past. The tree that was hit was removed by authorities.

“This is a place where I come and I say, ‘Hi Jojo, I’m here. I can talk to you.’ I feel something special going through me. I get that chill that I had when she died,” said Falbo, explaining she senses her daughter’s spirit at the site.

She recalled JoAnna's selflessness. JoAnna was enrolled at Hofstra University and often would cook meals for friends at the Phoenix House, a Hauppauge-based rehab center, Falbo said. She also was a skier, figure skater and scuba diver.

Falbo said she has not had contact with the Eginton family since their passing, and a message Newsday left for a possible relative of Eginton's was not returned.

While hundreds of lives have been lost on the Island's freeways in the past two decades, the Southern State is by far the deadliest of them. The Newsday analysis showed the parkway, one of the busiest highways in New York, claimed 229 lives from 2001 to 2021. During that period, there were 149 people killed in crashes on the LIE, 99 on the Northern State and 58 on the Meadowbrook.

Many of the memorials are prominent in the brush of the Southern State along a strip in Nassau County known as “Blood Alley,” which is called that because of the corridor’s numerous collisions and overpass strikes.

The roughly 10-mile stretch, between Exits 17 in Malverne and 30 in North Massapequa, is known for its sharp curves, short acceleration and deceleration ramps, and smaller exits, according to the Long Island Contractors’ Association. That group recently released a study highlighting the dangers of the parkway, and it proposes a public-private partnership to add a high-occupancy toll lane in either direction.

Along the Southern State and other freeways, memorials consist of simple handmade crosses with chunks of crushed metal nearby, while others contain large floral wreaths, photos and personal mementos, like a construction vest, a sports jersey or a soccer ball.

“It’s like a drive-in cemetery; you’re looking at all the shrines on the highways. When I drive, I wonder, 'What happened to this person?' ” said Robin Smith-Blackwood, who lost her daughter in a Dec. 13, 2019, crash on the Southern State.

On an eastbound bend near Exit 17S, Smith-Blackwood hung a heart-shaped wreath and a photo of Ashlee Tessono, who was a fitness influencer and entrepreneur from Baldwin. Tessono left behind a son, Ashton Prince Jefferson, now 8.

Tessono, 28, had worked a promoter’s party and was supposed to return to her mother’s house in Baldwin to drop off clothes for Ashton, who had slept over. But a police officer, not Tessono, knocked on her door that morning, Smith-Blackwood recalled.

“That night, I didn’t say goodbye. She was supposed to come back with his [Ashton’s] clothes. I never got the chance to hug her. Ashley was a loving, loving girl. I could just imagine her last moments, just wanting her son. She was all alone,” Smith-Blackwood said, believing that Tessono was heading to her home when the crash happened.

State Police previously said Tessono was speeding and was not wearing a seat belt when her vehicle careened into a tree and she was ejected. Smith-Blackwood believes her daughter was struggling to stay awake after a long shift and believes simple traffic measures such as rumble strips along the shoulder or in between lanes would have saved her.

“I put that memorial there so when I pass or anyone passes, they can see who Ashlee was. It’s also important for me to have it there so people can see it’s a dangerous highway,” Smith-Blackwood said.

“What we’re going through, I don’t want anyone to. It’s like every day is a nightmare, honestly, and you’re just trying to make it day to day. It’s really difficult. If it can save a life … whatever changes can be made,” she added.

The state Department of Transportation has made several modifications to the Southern State over the past few years, including extending ramps, installing reflective pavement markings and adding more visible warning signs. The state also has added reflectors on guardrails and concrete barriers, and electronic message signs.

"The safety of the traveling public is always the New York State Department of Transportation’s top priority, and we continuously review safety measures in place on all our highways — including those to deter wrong-way drivers," DOT spokesman Glenn Blain said in a statement. 

The memorials are not permitted along the state’s rights of way because of potential safety hazards for motorists and pedestrians, according to Blain.

Driver behavior is a major cause of accidents, traffic experts said, and Long Island saw a spike in fatal crashes during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a trend that coincides with national figures.

There were 28 deadly wrecks in 2020 on the four highways covered, the highest number since 2007, when there were 33. The 2020 figure is about 40% higher than in 2019, when there were 20 fatal crashes. There also were 28 deadly crashes in 2021. In the 21-year span, the number of fatal car crashes fell to its lowest in 2018, with 15.

Traffic deaths began to spike nationwide in 2020, when people were engaged in riskier driving behavior such as speeding and failure to wear a seat belt, according to the NHTSA.

While the 2021 accident breakdown by cause was not immediately available, the federal data showed that from 2001 through 2020, speeding was a factor in 227 of 434 crashes on the four Long Island freeways. The second top factor was roadway departures, and the third was crashes involving younger drivers, ages 16-24, according to data. Ranked fourth was drivers with a positive blood alcohol content.

Daniel Ahlgrim, a trooper and spokesman with the New York State Police, which patrols the parkways, noted that too many drivers fail to obey the rules of the road. He also said, in a statement, that “the Southern State is the most heavily traveled of the Long Island parkways, which is the most significant contributing factor to the number of fatalities on this roadway.”

About 200,000 cars use the Southern State daily, with speeds exceeding 65 mph despite 55 mph speed limits, according to the state DOT. Designed in the 1920s by Robert Moses for urbanites to trek to the Island’s beaches and parks, it is a 25-mile stretch that starts at the interchange with the Belt and Cross Island parkways in Nassau and turns into Heckscher State Parkway at Islip Avenue. Several upgrades have been made to handle the surge in vehicles.

Robert Sinclair Jr., a spokesman for AAA Northeast, said roads can be made safer through education, engineering, enforcement and equity. 

“The biggest problem on the roads today is attitude, the attitude of drivers not taking the operation of the motor vehicle as seriously as they should," Sinclair said. "There is nothing more dangerous you can do than riding in and operating a motor vehicle. As such, drivers really need to have the right attitude when they are behind the wheel."

Advocates and families said roadway redesign also can help prevent deadly collisions. 

Juliana Falbo, 32, said she hopes officials will revamp the area on the Southern State where her sister JoAnna died.

"I would like people to stop worrying about what can be done and do it now so families like myself don’t have to bury someone," she said. "I want you to feel what somebody who lost someone is feeling every day and then go on trying to live your life."

In 2020, 11,654 people died in alcohol-impaired car wrecks nationwide, a 14% spike since 2019, according to the NHTSA.

Lissette Jimenez, a certified nursing assistant, was killed on Feb. 2, 2020, when a drunken driver struck her car from behind at about 100 mph, according to authorities. For Jimenez's daughter, Ashley Villatoro, 21, of South Hempstead, it's been difficult to move forward. She often relives being escorted into a family room at Nassau University Medical Center to be told her mother had died.

Grieving family set up a highway monument for Jimenez, who was 39, off a northbound side of the Meadowbrook parkway near Exit M7. 

Nicole Pollock, who later admitted she was under the influence of THC and had 0.18% blood alcohol content, was sentenced to 6 to 18 years in prison last year after pleading guilty to several charges, including aggravated vehicular homicide and driving while impaired by alcohol and a drug.

Jimenez's name is painted in blood red on a white cross. An angel statue and holiday decorations, including an oversized candy cane and red, white and blue flowers, have been placed nearby.

Villatoro gets goose bumps when she visits, and she swears she can smell her mother’s favorite perfume, Victoria Secret’s Love Spell.

“It’s almost like a cold rush feeling,” said Villatoro, of South Hempstead.

“It’s really just to go, almost in a way, to feel like she’s there because it’s the last place she took her genuine last breath. The ambulance [workers] said she was alive in the ambulance, but, in reality, the injuries my mom had sustained in the accident — my mother was dead on scene.”

Villatoro wants drivers to consider the consequences of their actions before getting behind the wheel and hopes there will be even stiffer action against motorists charged with impaired or drunken driving.   

“Just think one more time before you leave the restaurant, or think one more time before you decide not to call that Uber," Villatoro said. "My mother misses out on watching her grandson grow up, on watching her last son, Brandon, grow up. He will be going to middle school now.”

Brandon Guzman, now 11, also was in the crash and suffered a broken elbow.

“Nothing is really ever the same,” Villatoro added, choking up.

A garden blooms along a bend on the Southern State Parkway near Exit 41A, marking the lives of two young women killed in a car accident 17 years ago.

JoAnna Falbo, 21, died at the crash scene on that Sunday in April, and her friend, Karinda Eginton, 20, was pronounced dead later at a local hospital. It was a damp morning, around 7:30, and the roads were slick as Falbo, driving a Honda Accord, headed east on the Southern State with Eginton in the passenger seat, Falbo's family said. When Falbo approached a fork at the exit, the car struck a median, hydroplaned and went off the right shoulder into a tree.

Now, every spring, tulips poke through the accident site, followed by lilacs, roses and daisies. The display was started by Falbo’s mother, Ania Falbo, in 2006 and is among more than two dozen roadside memorials recently spotted alongside Long Island’s main highways. The tributes are a grim reminder of the dangers of the Island's roadways.

There were 535 people killed in 462 crashes on the Island’s four major freeways from 2001 to 2021, including more than 200 killed on the Southern State, a Newsday analysis of police and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data found. The review covered the Long Island Expressway, Southern State, Meadowbrook and Northern State parkways in Nassau and Suffolk counties. 

WHAT TO KNOW

  • Roadside memorials are tributes for crash victims and a chilling reminder of the dangers of the road.
  • From 2001 through 2021, 535 people lost their lives in 462 crashes on four major freeways: the Long Island Expressway, and the Southern, Meadowbrook and Northern state parkways.
  • About 43% of those killed, 229, died on the Southern State, and about 28%, or 149 people, were killed on the LIE.
Ania Falbo at the roadside garden memorial for her daughter...

Ania Falbo at the roadside garden memorial for her daughter JoAnna. JoAnna Falbo and Karinda Eginton died in a car accident at the site in 2005. Credit: Debbie Egan-Chin

State Police said unsafe speed caused Falbo's 2005 accident, but the family blamed what it described as a treacherous interchange on the Southern State that begins with four lanes on the parkway widening to five as traffic merges from the Robert Moses Causeway.

The Southern State's two left lanes then branch into the Sagtikos Parkway. Drivers in a second-to-left lane can swing onto either parkway, an option highlighted by a double-arrow yellow sign on a median. Falbo was in that lane continuing on the Southern State when the accident happened, her family said. 

“Even before I had JoAnna, I remember driving that split and thinking, ‘Oh my God.’ There are people coming from Robert Moses and then there are three lanes of traffic to merge to the Sagtikos Parkway. Going through five lanes in a very, very short distance is dangerous, and I believe someone cut JoAnna off,” Ania Falbo, of East Meadow, said in an interview. 

The memorials along the freeways, whether stark or ornate, cast a light on lives cut short and offer families a place to mourn. At JoAnna's spot, Ania Falbo often takes out a stool to sit and pray as cars hurtle past. The tree that was hit was removed by authorities.

“This is a place where I come and I say, ‘Hi Jojo, I’m here. I can talk to you.’ I feel something special going through me. I get that chill that I had when she died,” said Falbo, explaining she senses her daughter’s spirit at the site.

She recalled JoAnna's selflessness. JoAnna was enrolled at Hofstra University and often would cook meals for friends at the Phoenix House, a Hauppauge-based rehab center, Falbo said. She also was a skier, figure skater and scuba diver.

Falbo said she has not had contact with the Eginton family since their passing, and a message Newsday left for a possible relative of Eginton's was not returned.

Southern State among busiest

While hundreds of lives have been lost on the Island's freeways in the past two decades, the Southern State is by far the deadliest of them. The Newsday analysis showed the parkway, one of the busiest highways in New York, claimed 229 lives from 2001 to 2021. During that period, there were 149 people killed in crashes on the LIE, 99 on the Northern State and 58 on the Meadowbrook.

Fatal motor vehicle crashes on the Long Island Expressway, the Meadowbrook State Parkway, the Northern State Parkway, and the Southern State Parkway in Nassau and Suffolk counties between 2001 and 2020. Coordinate data for crashes in 2021 were not available at the time of publication. Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS).

Many of the memorials are prominent in the brush of the Southern State along a strip in Nassau County known as “Blood Alley,” which is called that because of the corridor’s numerous collisions and overpass strikes.

The roughly 10-mile stretch, between Exits 17 in Malverne and 30 in North Massapequa, is known for its sharp curves, short acceleration and deceleration ramps, and smaller exits, according to the Long Island Contractors’ Association. That group recently released a study highlighting the dangers of the parkway, and it proposes a public-private partnership to add a high-occupancy toll lane in either direction.

Along the Southern State and other freeways, memorials consist of simple handmade crosses with chunks of crushed metal nearby, while others contain large floral wreaths, photos and personal mementos, like a construction vest, a sports jersey or a soccer ball.

“It’s like a drive-in cemetery; you’re looking at all the shrines on the highways. When I drive, I wonder, 'What happened to this person?' ” said Robin Smith-Blackwood, who lost her daughter in a Dec. 13, 2019, crash on the Southern State.

On an eastbound bend near Exit 17S, Smith-Blackwood hung a heart-shaped wreath and a photo of Ashlee Tessono, who was a fitness influencer and entrepreneur from Baldwin. Tessono left behind a son, Ashton Prince Jefferson, now 8.

Robin Smith-Blackwood, who lost her daughter Ashlee Tessono in a...

Robin Smith-Blackwood, who lost her daughter Ashlee Tessono in a 2019 crash on the Southern State. With Smith-Blackwood is Tessono's son, Ashton Prince Jefferson. Credit: Debbie Egan-Chin

Tessono, 28, had worked a promoter’s party and was supposed to return to her mother’s house in Baldwin to drop off clothes for Ashton, who had slept over. But a police officer, not Tessono, knocked on her door that morning, Smith-Blackwood recalled.

“That night, I didn’t say goodbye. She was supposed to come back with his [Ashton’s] clothes. I never got the chance to hug her. Ashley was a loving, loving girl. I could just imagine her last moments, just wanting her son. She was all alone,” Smith-Blackwood said, believing that Tessono was heading to her home when the crash happened.

State Police previously said Tessono was speeding and was not wearing a seat belt when her vehicle careened into a tree and she was ejected. Smith-Blackwood believes her daughter was struggling to stay awake after a long shift and believes simple traffic measures such as rumble strips along the shoulder or in between lanes would have saved her.

“I put that memorial there so when I pass or anyone passes, they can see who Ashlee was. It’s also important for me to have it there so people can see it’s a dangerous highway,” Smith-Blackwood said.

“What we’re going through, I don’t want anyone to. It’s like every day is a nightmare, honestly, and you’re just trying to make it day to day. It’s really difficult. If it can save a life … whatever changes can be made,” she added.

The state Department of Transportation has made several modifications to the Southern State over the past few years, including extending ramps, installing reflective pavement markings and adding more visible warning signs. The state also has added reflectors on guardrails and concrete barriers, and electronic message signs.

"The safety of the traveling public is always the New York State Department of Transportation’s top priority, and we continuously review safety measures in place on all our highways — including those to deter wrong-way drivers," DOT spokesman Glenn Blain said in a statement. 

The memorials are not permitted along the state’s rights of way because of potential safety hazards for motorists and pedestrians, according to Blain.

Spikes during COVID pandemic

Driver behavior is a major cause of accidents, traffic experts said, and Long Island saw a spike in fatal crashes during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a trend that coincides with national figures.

There were 28 deadly wrecks in 2020 on the four highways covered, the highest number since 2007, when there were 33. The 2020 figure is about 40% higher than in 2019, when there were 20 fatal crashes. There also were 28 deadly crashes in 2021. In the 21-year span, the number of fatal car crashes fell to its lowest in 2018, with 15.

Traffic deaths began to spike nationwide in 2020, when people were engaged in riskier driving behavior such as speeding and failure to wear a seat belt, according to the NHTSA.

While the 2021 accident breakdown by cause was not immediately available, the federal data showed that from 2001 through 2020, speeding was a factor in 227 of 434 crashes on the four Long Island freeways. The second top factor was roadway departures, and the third was crashes involving younger drivers, ages 16-24, according to data. Ranked fourth was drivers with a positive blood alcohol content.

Daniel Ahlgrim, a trooper and spokesman with the New York State Police, which patrols the parkways, noted that too many drivers fail to obey the rules of the road. He also said, in a statement, that “the Southern State is the most heavily traveled of the Long Island parkways, which is the most significant contributing factor to the number of fatalities on this roadway.”

About 200,000 cars use the Southern State daily, with speeds exceeding 65 mph despite 55 mph speed limits, according to the state DOT. Designed in the 1920s by Robert Moses for urbanites to trek to the Island’s beaches and parks, it is a 25-mile stretch that starts at the interchange with the Belt and Cross Island parkways in Nassau and turns into Heckscher State Parkway at Islip Avenue. Several upgrades have been made to handle the surge in vehicles.

Robert Sinclair Jr., a spokesman for AAA Northeast, said roads can be made safer through education, engineering, enforcement and equity. 

“The biggest problem on the roads today is attitude, the attitude of drivers not taking the operation of the motor vehicle as seriously as they should," Sinclair said. "There is nothing more dangerous you can do than riding in and operating a motor vehicle. As such, drivers really need to have the right attitude when they are behind the wheel."

Advocates and families said roadway redesign also can help prevent deadly collisions. 

Juliana Falbo, 32, said she hopes officials will revamp the area on the Southern State where her sister JoAnna died.

"I would like people to stop worrying about what can be done and do it now so families like myself don’t have to bury someone," she said. "I want you to feel what somebody who lost someone is feeling every day and then go on trying to live your life."

Killed by a drunken driver

In 2020, 11,654 people died in alcohol-impaired car wrecks nationwide, a 14% spike since 2019, according to the NHTSA.

Lissette Jimenez, a certified nursing assistant, was killed on Feb. 2, 2020, when a drunken driver struck her car from behind at about 100 mph, according to authorities. For Jimenez's daughter, Ashley Villatoro, 21, of South Hempstead, it's been difficult to move forward. She often relives being escorted into a family room at Nassau University Medical Center to be told her mother had died.

Grieving family set up a highway monument for Jimenez, who was 39, off a northbound side of the Meadowbrook parkway near Exit M7. 

Lissette Jimenez.

Lissette Jimenez. Credit: Debbie Egan-Chin

Nicole Pollock, who later admitted she was under the influence of THC and had 0.18% blood alcohol content, was sentenced to 6 to 18 years in prison last year after pleading guilty to several charges, including aggravated vehicular homicide and driving while impaired by alcohol and a drug.

Jimenez's name is painted in blood red on a white cross. An angel statue and holiday decorations, including an oversized candy cane and red, white and blue flowers, have been placed nearby.

Villatoro gets goose bumps when she visits, and she swears she can smell her mother’s favorite perfume, Victoria Secret’s Love Spell.

“It’s almost like a cold rush feeling,” said Villatoro, of South Hempstead.

“It’s really just to go, almost in a way, to feel like she’s there because it’s the last place she took her genuine last breath. The ambulance [workers] said she was alive in the ambulance, but, in reality, the injuries my mom had sustained in the accident — my mother was dead on scene.”

Villatoro wants drivers to consider the consequences of their actions before getting behind the wheel and hopes there will be even stiffer action against motorists charged with impaired or drunken driving.   

“Just think one more time before you leave the restaurant, or think one more time before you decide not to call that Uber," Villatoro said. "My mother misses out on watching her grandson grow up, on watching her last son, Brandon, grow up. He will be going to middle school now.”

Brandon Guzman, now 11, also was in the crash and suffered a broken elbow.

“Nothing is really ever the same,” Villatoro added, choking up.

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MacArthur LIRR connection ... Pink poping up in Farmingdale ... Fitness Fix: Deer Park Athletic Club ... Get the latest news and more great videos at NewsdayTV

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