Incident location, Long Island
What Happened
A 50-year-old Seaford man was killed late Sunday night after losing control of his pickup truck on the Southern State Parkway and slamming into the stone wall of a highway overpass, New York State Police said. The victim, identified as Charles F. Kenney, 50, of Seaford, died from injuries sustained in the single-vehicle crash, which unfolded east of Exit 25S in the Town of Hempstead, Nassau County.
According to Newsday, Kenney was traveling eastbound on the Southern State Parkway in a black 2023 Dodge Ram pickup truck at approximately 10:35 p.m. on Sunday, December 14, 2025, when he lost control of the vehicle. The truck veered off the roadway and struck the stone wall of the Newbridge Road overpass with significant force. The impact was severe enough that the pickup came to rest blocking both the center and right lanes of the parkway, disrupting eastbound traffic on one of Nassau County’s busiest corridors during the late-night hours.
New York State Police, who responded to and investigated the scene, cited two contributing factors in the crash: Kenney was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the collision, and he was traveling at an unsafe speed, Newsday reported. Both of these elements are consistent with the level of severity of the impact, which left the driver with what police described as serious physical injuries.
Emergency responders transported Kenney to Nassau University Medical Center, the regional trauma facility located in East Meadow. Despite treatment efforts, Kenney was later pronounced dead at the hospital, according to New York State Police, as reported by Newsday. No other occupants were reported in the vehicle, and no other vehicles were involved in the collision.
The crash scene, with the disabled truck blocking the center and right lanes of the eastbound parkway near a heavily trafficked overpass, required emergency response and traffic management in the area east of Exit 25S. The Newbridge Road overpass is a well-known landmark on this stretch of the Southern State, and its stone wall construction — a feature of many of the parkway’s older overpasses — dates to the era of Robert Moses, when the Southern State was designed with aesthetic as well as functional intent. That same architectural character, while historically significant, presents a rigid, unforgiving barrier in the event of a loss-of-control collision at speed.
Location & Road Context
The crash occurred on the Southern State Parkway eastbound, east of Exit 25S, at the Newbridge Road overpass in the Town of Hempstead. This section of the parkway runs through a densely populated stretch of Nassau County, connecting communities from Valley Stream in the west through to Babylon in the east. The Southern State is one of Long Island’s most heavily traveled limited-access highways and has a significant crash history — our database at Long Island Traffic shows 446 recorded incidents on the Southern State Parkway alone, including multiple crashes in recent weeks and a property-damage collision near Exit 37S. The parkway’s combination of aging infrastructure, narrow shoulders, and stone overpass abutments makes speed management especially critical for safe travel.
The Town of Hempstead, where this crash occurred, is the largest township in New York State by population and encompasses a significant portion of Nassau County’s Southern State Parkway corridor. Late-night travel on this section of the road, particularly at elevated speeds, carries elevated risk given the proximity of hard fixed objects like overpass walls.
Broader Impact
Seat belt non-compliance remains one of the deadliest factors in single-vehicle crashes on Long Island’s parkways. In this case, police specifically cited Kenney’s lack of seat belt use alongside unsafe speed as contributing to the fatal outcome — a combination that dramatically reduces a driver’s chances of surviving a high-speed impact against a fixed structure. A Newsday investigation into Long Island traffic fatalities found that a crash causing death, injury, or significant property damage occurs on Long Island on average every seven minutes, and that more than 2,100 people were killed in traffic crashes on the Island between 2014 and 2023, with more than 16,000 seriously injured over the same period. This crash on the Southern State is the latest addition to that grim count.