Officers within the NYPD Collision Investigation Squad have the best point of view to piece together how disasters unfold on the roads.
"That chance encounter leaves somebody deceased and that one vehicle that fled that scene - we have to kind of put them back there," said Lieutenant Jag Singh of the NYPD Collision Investigation Squad.
It's the tedious work of the squad; gathering video, using sophisticated tools to recreate a collision and determining how fast a vehicle was going by the size of a skid mark.
"That vehicle can go from one location to another county, to another state," Singh said.
Perhaps most challenging is trying to track down a hit-and-run driver.
"They hit the gas, they leave and they say, 'hey I don't want to take responsibility, I want to run away from this,'" Singh said.
On Tuesday, the hit-and run-driver who mowed down a Queens mother on Mother's Day in 2022, was sentenced to 28.5 years to life in prison. It's a case that would not have been closed without Lieutenant Singh's squad.
"We respond to these scenes and typically it's chaotic," Singh said.
When the NYPD Collision Investigation Squad arrives at the scene of a deadly or near-deadly crash, the investigation begins with a couple of tools that make people squeamish. One is a form of drug testing. The other is the breathalyzer.
Singh says these forms of testing is one factor in determining what kind of substance is in a person's body.
"Our officers are trained to detect what you're on," he said. "They are drug recognition experts. We have these tools to help us confidently say what you were on."
The evidence collected against Daniel Hyden helped win a conviction just last month. Investigators found his blood alcohol level to be .17 when he drove his pickup truck into a crowd on July 4, 2024.
Whether a driver stays or leaves the scene, if there's criminality, these officers are determined to find it.
"I do have a passion for that. I have a passion for that victim in getting them justice, and I have passion in getting the family some kind of justice," Singh said.
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