Sobbing driver, Jessica Beauvais, 32, who ‘killed NYPD cop in drunken crash’ says ‘I’m sorry’ as she’s led away in cuffs
A DRIVER accused of fatally running over an NYPD cop in a drunken crash before fleeing the scene offered a tearful apology as she was led away in handcuffs.
Jessica Beauvais, 32, was filmed sobbing as she walked out from the 107th Precinct in Queens for her arraignment on Tuesday in the death of highway officer Anastasios Tsakos, 43.
“I’m sorry,” a tearful Beauvais cried to a crowd of reporters as she was escorted into the back of a patrol vehicle in handcuffs.
“I’m sorry that I hit him and now he’s dead,” she is heard saying in footage of the exchange, shot by the NY Daily News.
Hours earlier, Tsakos had been directing traffic on the Long Island Expressway as he and other officers investigated the scene of another fatal crash.
Tsakos was standing next to his patrol car at around 2am when the driver of a Volkswagen veered and fatally struck the officer, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said on Tuesday.
Shea said the driver swerved towards the cop to avoid hitting other vehicles.
Tsakos, meanwhile, was taken to an area hospital, but he died from his injuries shortly after arriving.
“We stand here this morning reminded once again, in law enforcement, there is no such thing as a routine job,” Shea said.
“We stand here devastated and trying to pick up the pieces of what is a shattered home and a shattered NYPD family.”
Beauvais, of Hempstead, New York, was identified as the driver of the Volkswagen and was apprehended nearby.
She was intoxicated and driving with a suspended license at the time of the fatal collision, police said.
Beauvais has been slapped with several federal charges, including two counts of vehicular manslaughter, reckless endangerment, fleeing an officer in a motor vehicle, leaving an accident resulting in death, aggravated unlicensed operator, and aggravated unlicensed operator involving alcohol.
The 32-year-old also faces two misdemeanor charges: driving while intoxicated and reckless driving.
While being led out from the 107th Precinct earlier this afternoon, Beauvais was asked by reporters where she had been in the moments before the crash.
“I was coming from the studio,” she said as the car door was closing. “I do a podcast.”
In the latest episode of her podcast, published to Facebook on Monday night, Beauvais is heard spouting anti-police sentiments and is seen drinking from a plastic cup.
She told police when she was arrested around 2.30am that she had been downing vodka during the broadcast, the NY Post reported.
At least one of her podcast episodes opens with the with background music from N.W.A.’s famed rap hit, ‘F**k tha Police’.
Reacting to Tsako’s death on Tuesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the cop “is dead because he was at an accident where people had driven recklessly also with a suspended license.”
“We see here a horrendous pattern — people doing the wrong thing and other people dead because of it, and one of them a hero officer,” he said.
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“A hero officer who did everything right in his life for us. And he is dead because of other people’s negligence.”
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch remembered Tsakos as a beloved member of the NYPD who was well respected by his colleagues.
“In the police department, there are two compliments that you can give a fellow police officer that top no other,” he said. “He’s a cop’s cop and he’s a good guy. You heard them both in this emergency room.”