Cops: Multivehicle crash with garbage truck in Hauppauge kills 24-year-old man

A Bellerose man driving a garbage truck plowed into three cars and a school bus waiting at a red light off the Long Island Expressway in Hauppauge on Monday, killing a West Islip man in one of the cars, Suffolk County police said.

Jaswinder Singh, 51, driving a 2023 Mack garbage truck about 8:50 a.m., exited the LIE on the eastbound Express Drive South ramp and the vehicle rear-ended a Honda Accord, sideswiped a school bus and crashed into the back of a 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee at Motor Parkway.

The driver of the Accord, Joseph Kelly, 24, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The truck also sideswiped a Suffolk County Transportation school bus, carrying three toddlers. The driver of the bus and the children on board were not injured, police said.

The crash caused the Jeep to strike a 2009 Toyota Matrix that spun into a utility pole. The Jeep had to be dislodged off the front of the truck using a tow truck and police vehicles. 

The drivers of the Jeep and the Toyota were taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital where they were treated for their injuries.

Singh remained at the scene and was questioned by police. Police said he was issued several summonses for the crash.

The crash closed all lanes of Express Drive South until about 2 p.m. 

Preet Singh, the manager of a Bolla gas station next to the crash, said the gas station's surveillance footage caught part of the crash.

"The light was red and all of these cars were waiting for the light to turn green," Singh said. "When the truck hit the cars, there was just this 'boom' sound. You can see that the truck didn't stop. It just kept pushing the cars out of the way."

He said he came out of the station after hearing the crash and found witnesses pulling a woman out of the Jeep. She was bleeding from the head. 

He said the crash was at a dangerous intersection where other crashes have occurred. 

"We heard a big bang. It was just really bad,” Singh said. “People when they take exit, they're trying to make this light, and they're coming very fast."

The driver of the garbage truck declined to comment to media at the scene. 

The garbage truck, custom-made by Mack for the New York City Department of Sanitation for about $450,000, was still in possession of the vendor, said a department spokesman, adding that more work had to be done on it, including affixing decals and installing side guards.

New York City has a fleet of about 2,500 of these sanitation trucks.

There were 74,281 crashes on Long Island in 2022 — 38,675 in Nassau County and 35,606 in Suffolk, according to preliminary statistics maintained by the Institute for the University at Albany-based Traffic Safety Management & Research. In those crashes, 78 were killed and 14,359 injured in Nassau and 134 were killed and 13,473 injured in Suffolk.