A 27-year-old driver involved in a Queens car crash that killed his longtime girlfriend quickly admitted to cops he’d been drinking — but the dead woman’s family was just as quick to forgive him, calling the allegedly booze-fueled collision a simple “accident.”
“Both of them were responsible because they both were drunk,” Sylvia Camacho, victim Bridget Enriquez’s mother, told the Daily News on Friday. “That’s why I’m not mad at him.
“It was an accident,” Camacho added, despite Ray Perez’s admission to cops at the scene that he’d had “a couple of drinks” before the crash that led to Enriquez’s death.
Perez was speeding through Astoria, Queens, in a drunken stupor about 4 a.m. Thursday when his Nissan Altima blew past three stop signs and collided with a Honda Ridgeline SUV near 47th St. and 28th Ave., police and prosecutors said.
The Honda struck Perez’s driver’s side, sending his sedan into two unoccupied parked cars, prosecutors said. Enriquez was in the passenger seat when the Nissan rammed the two vehicles.
Panicked, Perez turned his mangled Nissan around and drove off down 47th St. without stopping.
He sped away with Enriquez dying in the passenger seat, prosecutors said. He finally pulled over at 56th Drive near 61st St. in Maspeth — about 4 miles from the initial crash — before he called 911.
Cops found Enriquez, 29, slumped over on her stomach in the passenger seat, prosecutors said. Blood was pouring down her face.
“I just killed my wife!” Perez told police following the crash, according to court documents.
Perez also admitted to drinking before getting behind the wheel.
“I am definitely going to fail the breath test because I had a couple of drinks at the club,” he said.
Perez told police that someone was chasing him and that he “was being extorted” when he fled the crash, although cops could not immediately confirm his account.
“Somebody was trying to take money from me,” he told police, according to court documents. “I didn’t want to stop. I went as far as I could. I was just trying to get away.”
He also said Enriquez encouraged him to flee. “My girl told me, ‘Let’s go,'” he said, according to court documents.
EMS rushed the young mom to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where she died. Doctors told her family she ultimately died of a heart attack.
She and Perez were never officially married, but lovingly called each other husband and wife, relatives said. They had been together for 11 years — she was his high school sweetheart — and were raising their 9-year-old boy in their Elmont, L.I. home, relatives said.
“She was always joyful,” Julio Enriquez, 27, said about his older sister. “I know she didn’t want to leave. It was just unexpected. She loved her son more than anything.
“Right now we can’t really speak much,” he said. “We’re still grieving.”
Perez registered .113% on a Breathalyzer test, well over the legal limit of .08%, cops said.
Prosecutors charged him with manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident, driving on a suspended license and drunken driving. Perez pleaded not guilty and Queens Criminal Court judge ordered him held on $40,000 bail during a brief arraignment Friday.
“The consequences of driving drunk and speeding are as tragic as they are predictable,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “The defendant’s decisions killed his own wife and put the lives of other motorists in danger. We cannot undo this tragedy, but we will hold the defendant accountable.”
Camacho said her family hadn’t heard from police and prosecutors, but believes they were making Perez “look like the bad guy when he’s not.”
“Ray really loved my daughter,” she said. “My daughter loved him. He’s a good father. He’s a good person.”
As she processes the tragedy, the only solace Camacho can find is in the eyes of a little boy — a child now left without a mother.
“I’m happy I have my grandson,” she said.
With Roni Jacobson
