A 22 year-old New York driver was fatally decapitated noon Wednesday as he allegedly tried to evade police after speeding eastbound on the Gowanus Expressway from a traffic light in Brooklyn, UK MailOnline reported, eventually crashing with a truck on an off ramp and severing his head from his body.
Leroy Sameul was waiting at a traffic light, with his girlfriend in the passenger seat, in a black 2003 Infiniti G35 sedan when a police officer attempted to approach the car on foot to issue a traffic citation. Although there was no chase, several witnesses saw Samuel immediately take off.
Upon being followed by the officer in his patrol car, Sameul stopped the car a few feet away. As soon as the officer stepped out, Samuel gave him the slip again, and was speeding off the eastbound Brooklyn-Queens Expressway at Atlantic Avenue and Hicks Street when he collided into a flatbed truck.
The vehicle's flatbed severed Samuel's head from his body, immediately killing him.
Joseph Vega, 59, was riding his bike to work at the time of the crash. "When he exited here he was driving 70 to 80 miles per hour, and the trailer was waiting for the light," Vega told the New York Post.
"When I went to see what happened to the driver, he had no head. His head was in the back seat. It was horrible," Vega said. "It was an instant death," he added to DNAinfo. "A split second. That's how fast it happened. The impact was so hard, just a boom."
After the crash, Samuel's girlfriend got out of the vehicle and tried to make an escape. However, she was apprehended by police and taken to Bellevue hospital for treatment. Her condition was reported as stable. "The girl limped out. She was trying to get away, but she was hurt. There were cuts on her arm," another witness, Hamid Mateen, said.
The truck owned by Monile Steam Boiler Rental Corp was empty except for some metal tubing inside.
