Incident location, Long Island
What Happened
A 49-year-old Brooklyn man was killed in the early morning hours of Thursday, December 5, 2024, after a multi-vehicle crash on the Long Island Expressway in Jericho, according to News 12 Long Island. Nassau County police say the fatal chain-reaction collision unfolded in the eastbound right lane shortly after 3 a.m., setting off a sequence of events that would close all eastbound lanes for hours and claim one life.
Police say the crash began when Kenneth Young, of Brooklyn, lost control of his 2012 Chevy Suburban while traveling eastbound in the right lane of the LIE, according to News 12 Long Island. The Suburban overturned and slid into the rear of a 2023 Dodge delivery van that had been pulled over on the side of the expressway. The circumstances that brought the Dodge van to a stop on the shoulder were not detailed in the initial police report.
The situation quickly escalated when a 2019 Freightliner — a large commercial tractor-trailer — then struck Young’s Chevy Suburban, which had come to a halt in the right travel lane following the rollover, as News 12 Long Island reports. The Freightliner impact in the live lane compounded the severity of the crash and would have posed an immediate danger to any occupants remaining in the Suburban.
Nassau County police medics responded to the scene and pronounced Young dead at the scene. No other injuries were reported — a notable detail given that at least two other vehicles and their operators were directly involved in the collision sequence. Young, 49, of Brooklyn, was the sole fatality. Police have not publicly identified the drivers of the Dodge delivery van or the Freightliner, and no charges had been announced as of the initial report.
The crash forced a sweeping closure of the Long Island Expressway eastbound, shutting all eastbound lanes between Exit 39 (Guinea Woods Road/Old Country Road) and Exit 41 (Route 106/107, Jericho/Oyster Bay Road) for several hours following the collision. For early morning commuters heading eastbound through Nassau County in the hours before dawn, the shutdown represented a significant disruption along one of Long Island’s most heavily traveled corridors.
Location & Road Context
The crash occurred on I-495, the Long Island Expressway, in the Jericho hamlet of Nassau County, between Exits 39 and 41 — a stretch of highway that sees some of Long Island’s heaviest freight and commuter traffic. The LIE serves as the primary east-west spine of Long Island and is one of the most congested interstates in the United States during peak hours.
The Long Island Expressway has a significant crash history. Our database alone records 795 incidents on I-495, ranging from disabled vehicles to fatal multi-car collisions. Recent incidents include an overturned vehicle on I-495 and multiple crashes in both directions in just the past several months, underscoring the persistent danger this road poses — particularly in the overnight and early morning hours when lighting is limited and emergency response times can be longer.
Broader Impact
This crash highlights one of the most dangerous scenarios on any high-speed expressway: a disabled or stopped vehicle left in an active travel lane. Once Young’s Suburban came to rest in the right travel lane following the rollover, it created an invisible hazard in the predawn darkness for any approaching vehicle — and in this case, a fully loaded Freightliner commercial truck had no opportunity to avoid the collision. New York State law requires drivers to move to a shoulder when a vehicle becomes disabled on a highway, and the presence of the Freightliner strike underscores how quickly a survivable rollover can become unsurvivable when a stopped vehicle remains in the path of oncoming traffic on a highway like the Long Island Expressway.