A lawsuit has been filed against Yonkers and its police force in relation to the tragic vehicle accident that claimed the lives of four city youths barely a few weeks before Christmas in 2020.
At least three of the households of the Yonkers youths whose lives were tragically lost accuse the city’s police force of being responsible for the terrible collision that unfolded when Devon Haywood, a Mount Vernon resident, smashed the 2006 Nissan the four boys were traveling in.
Randy Brisbane, Tamari Watkins, Brandon Sierra and Anthony Cruz, all 18 years old, died in an accident. The past summer, they had just received their diplomas from Saunders Trades and Technical High School.
Their unexpected passing shattered the whole city.
The three plaintiffs contend Yonkers police botched the chase of Haywood, who was trying to elude authorities on Riverdale Avenue as they attempted to pull him over for reckless driving, in separate lawsuits filed in state Supreme Court this month.
Haywood, 36, died in the collision on December 22, 2020.
Cruz, Watkins, and Sierra’s families have instituted a civil lawsuit.
Yonkers police said the next day that they had not been involved in a high-speed chase. At the time, officers made the decision to withdraw and “decided not to chase to avoid this exact type of scenario,” according to Detective Lieutenant Dean Politopoulos, the department’s public information officer.
According to Politopoulos, the police vehicle was around 15 seconds beside Haywood’s white 2009 Infiniti sedan and was never in emergency mode.
Cruz’s mother, Kathy Burgos, filed a complaint alleging that the police department failed to properly direct its officers to follow Haywood’s car and failed to ensure the correct use of safety devices including sirens, horns, and lights.
In the lawsuit filed by Watkins’ mother, Darlene Reynolds, Yonkers is charged with starting a high-speed chase “which was unnecessarily risky under the circumstances” and causing the collision.
Furthermore, it was asserted that the police department’s conduct raised the possibility of harm to the public in the case filed by Rina Patricia Sierra.
Police reported that Haywood had a reputation for driving recklessly at the time. According to prior reporting by The Journal News, he also faced federal and state indictments over the past 17 years for narcotics and firearms offenses.
