Nassau cop in crash remains serious

The Nassau County police officer injured when she swerved her patrol car into a guardrail on the Southern State Parkway to avoid hitting a driver she was chasing remains in serious but stable condition, a police spokeswoman said Tuesday.

After bouncing off the guardrail in the chase Monday, the officer's car came back into parkway traffic and was then hit by another vehicle, police said. The officer was chasing a dark gray sedan -- which remained at large Tuesday -- when the accident occurred, police said.

The driver of the gray sedan slammed on the brakes, and the pursuing police car then rammed the guardrail, police said. There were two people in the fleeing car, said Nassau Police Lt. Kevin Smith.

The crash caused the eastbound parkway to be shut down at Exit 31, Bethpage State Parkway, for about 41/2 hours while police investigated. Officials reopened the road shortly before 5 p.m.

A spokesman at Nassau University Medical Center Tuesday morning said the officer remains in intensive care.

Police are withholding the name of the injured officer but said she is a veteran of nearly 20 years on the department, married and has children.

Smith gave the following account of what led to the crash:

The officer was responding to a call of a suspicious car about 12:20 p.m. after a witness saw two individuals replacing Pennsylvania license plates with Florida plates on the gray sedan in the vicinity of South Park Drive and Pine Street in North Massapequa.

When the Seventh Precinct officer arrived, she spotted the car and began to follow it onto the Southern State Parkway, entering in the vicinity of Linden Boulevard near Bethpage State Parkway, heading east.

As the fleeing car and police officer approached just west of the underpass of Route 110, the driver of the car hit the brakes -- a maneuver, police believe, that was done to lose the officer and make her take evasive action.

Not wanting to strike the vehicle from behind, the officer abruptly cut to the right and hit a guardrail, Smith said. Both the suspects' car and the patrol car were traveling about 60-65 mph during the chase, he said.

The impact propelled the patrol car back into traffic, where it was struck by another vehicle headed eastbound. The patrol car ended up on the left and middle lanes of the Southern State underneath the Route 110 overpass.

The two occupants of the vehicle that hit the patrol car were not injured. The police officer suffered injuries to her head, neck, upper shoulders and chest area, Smith said.

Police have stepped up patrols in the area after reports of up to 14 burglaries in the past month.

"So it's not unusual for our officers to try to get to a scene like that and see what we can find," Smith said.

Smith said the officer turned on the patrol car's lights and siren because the occupants were suspected of switching licenses plates and "there is reasonable suspicion that this car should be pulled over."