AG James Won’t Charge Cop Who Ran Over And Dragged Sleeping Man in Park While Applying Makeup

It’s all just lip service.

An NYPD cop who ran over and fatally dragged a man as she drove with both hands occupied with a lip gloss and applicator will not face state criminal charges for the incident inside a Queens park last year, Attorney General Letitia James announced.

James’s investigators said they could not find evidence that Officer Lavonje Devone was “criminally negligent” when she drove her squad car over 38-year-old Erasmo Huerta Gonzalez on a pedestrian-heavy interior road in Flushing Meadows Corona Park on Aug. 23 — despite concluding that she had “an open tube of lip gloss between the thumb and index finger of her right hand as it gripped the wheel,” according to the April 14 investigation report.

“Officer Devone had a lip gloss bottle in her right hand and an applicator in her left,” the report added, before concluding, “There is no indication that she was unable to steer because of what was in her hand.”

But onlookers at the scene certainly believed Devone was distracted, as at least one shouted at her to stop as she drove towards the sleeping Gonzalez, whose presence in the roadway had been flagged for the NYPD a minute earlier by two Mets employees, the report revealed.

“A person!” someone can be heard shouting on NYPD body-worn camera footage of the incident released by the attorney general’s office last week.

A nearby police lieutenant flagged down Devone, who joined the force in 2021, to get her to stop before the crash, according to James’s Office of Special Investigations. But investigators concluded that they could not clear the legal burden of proof that Devone was criminally negligent.

“Based on the law and evidence, OSI concludes a prosecutor would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Officer Devone committed a crime,” the report concluded. “As a result, OSI will not seek charges and closes the matter with this report.”

The victim moved to the United States from Mexico, where he has a teenage son, in 2012. The youngest of six siblings, with two other brothers living in the US, previously told Streetsblog that he loved soccer and was “always an upbeat person.”

The crash

The fatal crash happened around 4:37 p.m. on a Saturday, as law enforcement and other motorists flooded the already busy park for the US Open, which fills large swaths of the green space for several weeks every summer.

Gonzalez, a Queens resident, was lying on the interior United Nations Avenue South park path, apparently asleep, according to two Mets employees on golf carts who spotted him and texted an NYPD sergeant with a picture of him about a minute before the crash to alert law enforcement that the person blended in with the shaded asphalt.

It’s unclear if Devone and the other officer in the car knew about this report at the time they were driving.

Disturbing body camera footage from Devone’s partner, Officer Keisha Compere showed Officer Devone turn around the bend and accelerate before she runs over Huerta Gonzalez. The fatal incident “felt like they had gone over a speed bump,” Compere told the AG’s investigators.

A witness told the AG’s office that the two cops appeared to be talking before the crash, but that Devone faced “straight ahead, in the direction of the man on the roadway,” according to the report.

It’s unclear what the pair of officers were discussing. NYPD body-worn cameras run on a 60-second video-only loop, called a “pre-event buffer,” until an officer hits “record,” so beginning of the video has no sound.

Bystanders tried to stop Devone before she drove her squad car over Gonzalez. NYPD Lieutenant Maritza Meade was nearby when she heard “a commotion” and rushed to stop Devone from running over Gonzalez, the report said.

Officer Compere told investigators it “was not clear what she was saying and thought Lt. Meade was telling them to roll down the car window,” according to the report.

The sound switched on in the video after the cops finally stopped and got out of the car — at which point someone in the background could be heard shouting, “A person!”

“We had to yell and wave at the cops to stop the car,” another bystander told Streetsblog. “You could hear the crunch of what we assumed to be bones. Yeah, it was awful.”

Devone was driving 7.14 miles per hour, according to NYPD’s Collision Investigation Squad. Gonzalez could be heard groaning in pain underneath the car. Devoe’s own body-worn camera footage showed him moving his feet.

The victim was still “conscious and able to communicate,” as the officer called for help, but became unresponsive by the time he was in an ambulance en route to NewYork-Presbyterian Queens hospital. He died at 5:14 p.m., and the Medical Examiner determined his cause of death to be “blunt force trauma of torso” from being run over by Devone.

James’s office ultimately decided not to charge Devone because “there is no indication that she was unable to steer because of what was in her hand.”

In a statement to Streetsblog, an NYPD spokesperson blamed Gonzalez for his own death, citing his high blood alcohol concentration at the time of the incident and the fact that he shouldn’t have been lying in the mixed-use roadway.

“This is a paved roadway meant for vehicular traffic. A place where it is not expected for an individual – whose alcohol concentration was three times the legal limit – is expected to be lying in the middle of,” the statement said, adding that James’s report “clearly states that there was no indication that the officer was driving while distracted.”

The NYPD rep, who declined to provide a name, said it was “quite common practice” for cops to talk to each other while driving, and that it “would be dangerous to suggest that officers or any member of the public couldn’t speak to a passenger while driving.” (Streetsblog never suggested that, though driver distraction is a leading cause of crashes.)

Difficult to prove

James’s office launched the probe last year, as required by state law for any instance where a police officer kills someone “by an act or omission,” but her investigators could not clear the high bar required to charge someone criminally in a crash.

New York prosecutors are limited by the so-called “rule of two” precedent, whereby they have to prove that a driver messed up twice in a fatal crash, such as running a red light or speeding while also failing to yield the right of way to a person who was hit.

Queens attorney and street safety advocate Peter Beadle agreed with James’s assessment of the difficulty of making a case, but said it showed how out of touch the legal system is with the fact that driving is inherently dangerous behavior.

“There’s evidence that shows that they were distracted. I think there’s enough there to make the strong case that there was negligence here,” he said. “This is one of the frustrating cases where it feels like it’s out of touch with reality.”

Devone declined through her lawyer to talk to the AG’s investigators, which is her right under the law. The NYPD declined to provide a comment from her. Devone remains on the force, earning close to $90,000 per year with overtime, according to city records.