Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on May 30 in New York.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on May 30 in New York. Credit: AP/Seth Wenig

A teen held in a Syosset orphanage was charged Tuesday with killing a groom-to-be and his passenger a day before the wedding in a wrong-way crash on the Henry Hudson Parkway in late August.

Jimmy Connors, 17, was arrested at the Canadian border on Aug. 25, the day after the wreck, where prosecutors said he was attempting to flee to. His indictment was unsealed Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, charging him with second-degree murder and manslaughter.

Connors smashed head-on in his Chevy Silverado pickup truck into the Dodge Challenger driven by Kirk Walker with his cousin Robert McLurin in the passenger seat while barreling south in the northbound lanes of the parkway at West 165th Street around 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 24, according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

The car with Walker and McLaurin burst into flames as Connors abandoned his truck, which had Canadian license plates, leaped from his truck, crossed the median into the southbound lanes and fled into the woods, prosecutors said.

Walker, who was to be married the next day, was taken to New York Columbian Presbyterian Hospital, where he died. McLaurin was taken to Harlem Hospital, but could not be saved.

Authorities caught up with Connors the next day at the Canadian border as he tried to flee the country, according to the district attorney. He was covered in blood and had cuts and bruises on his face and stomach and walked with a limp.

"The bruise on my stomach is from a motorcycle accident," Connors told Border Agent George de Jesus when taken into custody, prosecutors said.

He was put into an unaccompanied minor program of the federal Refugee Resettlement program and housed at MercyFirst orphanage in Syosset, according to prosecutors.

The teen’s defense lawyer, Jonathan Perez, told the court at his arraignment that his client is both "epileptic and autistic and was not the driver of the truck."

Surveillance video obtained by investigators in Manhattan before the crash shows someone fitting Connors' description, dressed in a white polo shirt getting into the driver's side of the truck at West 41st Street, according to a police affidavit. DeJesus told investigators that the person on the video was Connors.

A Manhattan grand jury also voted to indict the teenager on three counts of leaving the scene of an accident without reporting and two counts of criminally negligent homicide.

Bragg said that the investigation into the teenager remains ongoing and asked for anyone who witnessed the crash or Connors driving recklessly beforehand to call 212=335-9040.

At least one witness told police he followed Connors after the teen sideswiped his car going north on the parkway, according to court records. The driver followed Connors in his car and saw him get off the highway at Dykman Street, make a U-turn and then drive south in the northbound lanes shortly before the fatal crash. The witness saw the driver of the truck flee the scene wearing a white shirt, according to his affidavit.

"This incident is a horrific tragedy, and my heartfelt thoughts are with the loved ones of Mr. Walker and Mr. McLaurin. Mr. Walker was set to get married the next day and these families should have been celebrating that joyous occasion," Bragg said.

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