In the early morning hours, an off-duty police officer crashed his car into the midtown location of Tiffany, at Fifth Avenue and West 57th Street. WABC 7 reports, "The driver of this car flipped over, snapped a tree in half, and crushed a trash can before coming to a stop on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk," adding, "Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened." WCBS 2 offers, "The vehicle ended up on its side after colliding with a private sanitation truck on 5th Avenue." Update: Now it's suspected that the off-duty cop was...driving while intoxicated.
According to the Daily News, 27-year-old cop Raphael Ospina was charged with driving while intoxicated and vehicular assault. Also: "A champagne cork and a carton of Tropicana orange juice were spotted inside Ospina's car, which had its windshield shattered in the crash and its roof cut off by firefighters rescuing the men trapped inside."
Ospina and his two passengers were taken to Bellevue with injuries with non-life-threatening injuries. The crash occurred when Ospina, traveling east on 57th Street in his Chrysler 300, struck a private sanitation truck traveling west and making a left turn onto Fifth Avenue. In the past six months, there have been a few DWI cop incidents.
