One dead after multiple vehicles involved in Plainview crash, Nassau police say

Nassau police are investigating a fatal collision involving multiple vehicles on Old Country Road in Plainview Thursday afternoon, the department said.

Police received calls regarding the crash about 2 p.m. Thursday near the vicinity of Sylvia Lane, the department said.

When Plainview Fire Department Chief Andrew Cohen arrived on the scene, he counted seven vehicles involved in the wreck. The scene was not a multicar pileup, but appeared instead to be various separate accidents, all in the eastbound lanes of Old County Road.

"It looked like there were two cars that had a head-on collision," Cohen said around 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the firehouse down the road from the crash site. "There were two cars that had passed it that were involved in an accident, and there were another couple of cars that were involved in an accident. I think people just rear ended each other at that point."

Late Thursday, the Nassau police said the male driver of a 2018 Nissan Murano heading west on Old Country Road hit the back of a 2012 Toyota mininvan, starting a chain reaction crash involving multiple vehicles.

"As a result of the collision," the Nassau police said in the release, "the 71-year-old driver of the Nissan Murano was transported to a local area hospital and pronounced deceased by a staff physician."

Another six patients sustained "minor injuries," including "an ankle injury, a possible fracture," "chest pains," "head and neck pain," according to Cohen.

The event was treated as a mass casualty incident, the fire chief noted, during which ambulances from multiple agencies transported victims to different hospitals. Plainview, Northwell Health and Nassau County ambulances were all on scene.