A judge on Tuesday ordered the driver who fatally struck two people in Manhattan’s Chinatown on Saturday held in jail on murder and other charges, prosecutors said — roughly three months after she was charged in a Brooklyn crash that seriously injured a pedestrian.
Autumn Donna Ascencio Romero, a 23-year-old Staten Island resident, was arraigned Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court on a slew of charges in the Chinatown case, in which a cyclist and pedestrian were killed.
Prosecutors alleged she lost control of a rented Chevrolet Malibu sedan around 7:30 a.m. Saturday, while coming off the Manhattan Bridge at high speed and struck 55-year-old Kevin Cruickshank of Manhattan, who was riding a bike, and 63-year-old May Kwok of Brooklyn, who was sitting on a bench near the intersection of Canal Street and Bowery.
The collision left both victims “severely dismembered,” and they were pronounced dead at the scene, according to a criminal complaint from the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Police found an open bottle of tequila in the car’s passenger area and a travel cup “containing a liquid with a strong odor of alcohol,” the complaint said.
They also found two 9 mm semiautomatic pistols and 9 mm ammunition in a box in the trunk, prosecutors said.
Ascencio Romero’s lawyer, Howard Greenberg, said in a phone interview that he consulted with an accident reconstruction expert and private investigator and is arguing the crash happened after the car’s passenger — whom law enforcement officials identified as 22-year-old Queens resident Kennedy LeCraft — tried to grab the wheel while “drunk and stoned out of her mind.”
“[Ascencio Romero] had a neuromuscular reaction to the wheel being grabbed, which was to press down on the gas pedal,” Greenberg said.
He added that he did not know whether his client was drunk or high at the time.
LeCraft’s attorney Jacob Kaplan declined to comment on those remarks and his client’s case. She was arraigned Monday on multiple charges in the incident, including unauthorized use of a vehicle, criminal possession of stolen property and criminal possession of a weapon.
A different judge set bail at $150,000 cash or $300,000 bond for her.
According to the complaint, a witness saw Ascencio Romero and LeCraft exit the car after the crash and try to flee with blood on their clothing. Police apprehended them near Bowery and Hester Street, prosecutors said.
LeCraft had rented the car from an Enterprise Rent-A-Car and was supposed to return it on June 29, but never did, the DA’s office alleged.
Brooklyn prosecutors said Ascencio Romero was arrested in a different collision case on April 13 after she struck a woman while driving a white Nissan with a suspended license near the intersection of Coney Island Avenue and Beverly Road in Kensington around 1:40 a.m.
The woman sustained a broken nose, a broken collarbone and missing teeth, prosecutors said.
The charges in that case, which included leaving the scene of an accident with serious injuries and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, were not eligible for bail, according to the Brooklyn DA’s office.
Ascencio Romero was released awaiting trial, court records show.
She is due back in court in the Chinatown case later this week and in the Kensington case in early August, according to the records.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
