Heartbroken families describe pain at sentencing of July 4 drunk driver who killed four in NYC: ‘I want mommy’
Heartbroken New Yorkers whose relatives were mowed down by a drunken addiction counselor during a July Fourth party described their collective pain as the killer was sentenced to 24 years Friday — including how one child whose mother died now whispers “I want mommy” in the night.
“How can I express how it feels to hold him close at bedtime and hear him whisper in the silence, ‘I want mommy’?” Lilian Ruiz, the mother of victim Emily Ruiz, said in court about her 7-year-old grandson Kal-El in the aftermath of the July 4, 2024 nightmare.
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Ruiz was one of four killed when Daniel Hyden, a 44-year-old self-described substance counselor who boasted about his sobriety, drunkenly got behind the wheel of his Ford F-150 and plowed through a fence and into a party at a Lower East Side Park.
“I mourn never hearing her call me mom again, but mostly I mourn for my daughter and my grandson and all they have been denied,” Lilian Ruiz added, before Hyden was handed his lengthy term by Manhattan Supreme Court Judge April Newbauer. He had been convicted on all-counts related the the deaths at trial in November.
“You very likely knew that you could kill them and didn’t care,” the judge seethed to Hyden before issuing his sentence.
Eight victims read at the sentencing — including Starkema Lewis, a relative of the Herman Pinkney, 38, and his aunt, 59-year-old Lucille Pinkney, who was left wondering why Hyden, who penned the autobiography called “The Sober Addict,” guzzled booze before fatally killing their relatives.
“Daniel Hyden: a substance abuse counselor…,” Lewis said in their victim impact statement. “Someone who built a career telling others not to make the same choices he made that night.
“He knew what could happen. He knew the devastation caused by drunk driving, and yet despite multiple prior DUI incidents, he still chose to get behind the wheel.”
Family of fatal victim Ana Morel, a disabled woman who apparently dreamed about the wreck, pinned the lost of their loved one — who they said was supposed to be in Connecticut celebrating the holiday with family before changing her plans at the last minute.
“We can’t see Fourth of July as a celebration,” Zolia Hernandez and Evelyn Morel wrote in a letter. “This day will forever haunt us. I wish I can have the power to bring my sister back.”
Hyden allegedly had a blood-alcohol content of up to .17 — more than twice the legal limit, prosecutors have said.
Prosecutors have said that Hyden had been kicked off a party boat in lower Manhattan for being too drunk before he decided to get in his truck.
He then plowed into the crowd at Corlears Hook Park going 52 mph, killing the four people and injuring another seven in the horror, authorities have said.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos scolded Hyden for his “reckless and destructive” decision to get behind the wheel while drunk — considering Hyden had previously been busted for boozed-up driving.
“He was always going to be drunk. It was always going to be 2,000 pounds of twisted steel burying human flesh and bone,” Bogdanos said.
An emotionless Hyden apologized to the victims of his carnage while also pondering his own sister’s death in 2021, who died at the hands of a drunk driver in New Jersey.
He said he was supposed to deliver his own statement at his sister killer’s sentencing until he found himself behind bars at Rikers for the same crime.
“What kind of human being would put other human beings through the same thing he went through?” Hyden said, who claimed he relapsed after his sister’s death.
Hyden was found guilty of four counts of murder, aggravated vehicular homicide and seven counts of assault at the non-jury trial.
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