Incident location, Long Island
What Happened
A 50-year-old Seaford man is dead after a single-vehicle crash on the Southern State Parkway late Sunday night, December 14, 2025, according to the New York State Police. At approximately 10:35 PM, troopers responded to a report of a serious personal injury crash on the parkway’s eastbound lanes, east of Exit 25S — the Newbridge Road interchange — in the Town of Hempstead, Nassau County.
The driver, identified as Charles F. Kenney, age 50, of Seaford, was behind the wheel of a 2023 black Ram pickup truck when he lost control of the vehicle. According to the New York State Police, investigators determined that Kenney was traveling at an unsafe speed and was not wearing his seatbelt at the time of the crash — two factors that contributed directly to the severity of the outcome. The truck left the roadway and slammed into the stone wall of the Newbridge Road overpass, a fixed structure that offers no margin of error for a vehicle making contact at speed.
After the collision, Kenney’s Ram pickup truck came to rest in the roadway, blocking both the center and right lanes of the Southern State Parkway eastbound. Emergency responders arrived on scene and found Kenney with serious physical injuries. He was transported to Nassau University Medical Center, the Nassau County trauma center located in East Meadow, where he was later pronounced deceased by medical personnel. No other vehicles or occupants were reported to be involved in the crash, which was classified as a single-vehicle incident.
The crash was investigated by New York State Police Troop L, headquartered in East Farmingdale. The Troop L Commander is Major Christopher P. Casale, and the public information officer handling the case is Trooper Brittany Burton. The State Police issued a formal media advisory on December 15, 2025 — the morning following the crash — disclosing the circumstances of the collision and confirming Kenney’s death.
The combination of factors documented by investigators — excessive speed and the absence of a seatbelt — paint a picture consistent with the most preventable categories of single-vehicle fatalities on Long Island’s parkway system. Kenney’s truck, a 2023 model, was a relatively new and substantial vehicle, yet its mass offered no protection against a stone overpass wall at an unsafe speed when the driver was unrestrained. Per the New York State Police media advisory, the investigation is ongoing under Troop L’s jurisdiction.
Location & Road Context
The crash unfolded on the Southern State Parkway eastbound, just past Exit 25S, where the Newbridge Road overpass spans the roadway in the Town of Hempstead. This stretch of the parkway runs through one of the most densely traveled corridors in Nassau County, connecting communities from Valley Stream in the west to Babylon in the east. The Newbridge Road overpass at Exit 25S is a fixed concrete and stone structure — the kind of rigid barrier that provides zero forgiveness in a high-speed impact scenario.
The Southern State Parkway has a documented history of serious crashes. Long Island Traffic’s database alone records 446 incidents on this roadway, with recent crashes logged as recently as May 2026, reflecting the corridor’s persistent safety challenges. The parkway’s design — built in the Robert Moses era, with narrow lanes, limited shoulders, and aging overpasses — can amplify the consequences of driver error, particularly at night and at elevated speeds. The late-night timing of this crash, just after 10:30 PM on a Sunday, placed Kenney on a roadway with reduced traffic but also reduced visibility and emergency response times compared to peak daytime hours.
Broader Impact
New York State law requires all front-seat occupants — and all occupants of any vehicle regardless of seating position when under 16 — to wear a seatbelt. For adult drivers and front-seat passengers, failure to buckle up carries a fine of up to $50 per violation. While the financial penalty is modest, the real-world cost of non-compliance is starkly illustrated by this crash: the New York State Police specifically cited Kenney’s lack of a seatbelt as a contributing factor in his death, a detail investigators make a point of including in crash reports precisely because it is actionable — it is a choice that, made differently, can change a fatal outcome into a survivable one. On a parkway with 446 recorded incidents and stone overpass walls just feet from the travel lanes, the margin for error at unsafe speeds without a seatbelt is effectively zero.