3/4/2013
By ANTHONY M. DESTEFANO AND JOSEPH MALLIA
New York City police want to question an ex-con in connection with the tragic car crash in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, early Sunday that killed a young couple and led to the death in a hospital Monday of their infant son born after the accident, officials said.
Police suspect Julio Acevedo, 44, who spent nearly 10 years in prison in a fatal shooting, was driving a black 2010 BMW about 60 mph when it struck a livery cab with the couple inside at Kent Avenue and Wilson Street about 1:30 a.m. Sunday, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said Monday. A witness told investigators she saw the car pass her at high speed before the crash, Browne added.
Sunday morning’s crash was about a mile from the spot where last month police stopped and arrested Acevedo in a different BMW on a charge of driving while intoxicated. Police said Acevedo admitted Feb. 17 that he had been drinking two beers at a baby shower in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a criminal complaint stated. Chemical tests determined Acevedo’s blood-alcohol level was 0.13 percent, the complaint stated. Acevedo was charged with driving while intoxicated and released on his own recognizance, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said.
Browne said it wasn’t known whether Acevedo had been drinking. Killed in the crash were Nachman and Raizy Glauber, both 21. The couple, both members of the neighborhood’s Hasidic community, had hired a livery cab to take Raizy, who was about seven months pregnant with their first child and feeling ill, to Long Island College Hospital when the BMW smashed into the rear driver’s side door. The livery driver was listed in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital Center. Raizy Glauber was thrown from the cab.
The couple’s male child was delivered by Caesarean section Sunday at Bellevue Hospital Center, but died early Monday, according to Hasidic community spokesman Isaac Abraham. He said the child was circumcised in a traditional Jewish ceremony after his death, given a Jewish name and buried with his parents in a cemetery near the upstate Satmar community of Kiryas Joel.
Rabbi Steven Weil, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, an umbrella organization for Orthodox communities in North America, said that under Jewish law a child who doesn’t survive 30 days does not have the status of a full person. That means no traditional seven-day mourning period of shiva, as is afforded to his parents, is planned, Weil said.
According to police, Acevedo had given his last known address as 177 Sands St., Brooklyn. Browne said that in 1987, Acevedo was charged with second-degree murder, but he didn’t have details of the arrest. Court records show that Acevedo in 1989 pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the same case. State Department of Correction records show Acevedo shot a man to death, was sentenced to 8 to 16 years and was released in June 1998. Acevedo was reincarcerated in October 1998 for a parole violation and released the following August, state records show.
Acevedo had a number of other arrests on drugs, DWI and reckless endangerment charges, Browne said, but their outcomes were unavailable Monday.
With Ivan Pereira
and Igor Kossov
