West Islip woman, 19, dies in crash on Higbie Lane, police say

A West Islip woman died Tuesday morning in a head-on collision with a truck in West Islip, Suffolk County police said.

Julia Schweers, 19, a 2014 graduate of St. John the Baptist High School, where her father, Keith, was the football coach from 2007 to 2013, was fatally injured in the 5:55 a.m. crash at the intersection of Higbie Lane and Union Boulevard.

Keith Schweers also is a former New York City police officer who was shot and wounded on the job in the 1990s.

Police said Julia Schweers was driving north on Higbie Lane when her 2011 Toyota Camry collided with the 2005 Mitsubishi box truck, which was trying to turn left onto Union.

She was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip, where she died, police said.

Police said the driver of the truck, Antonio Reyes, 45, of 129 Patterson St., Perth Amboy, New Jersey, was not injured in the crash.

Keith Schweers was a 26-year-old NYPD officer assigned to the 113th Precinct in Jamaica, Queens, when he was shot in the chest at point-blank range on Oct. 30, 1995 -- then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani said a bulletproof vest saved Schweers' life.

According to newspaper accounts of the shooting, Schweers' wife was five months pregnant with their second child.

Julia Schweers was born in March 1996.

With Andy Slawson

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”