The mother of a woman whose alleged reckless driving claimed her cousin’s life on a Queens expressway two years ago said she’ll fight tooth and nail to keep her daughter out of prison after police arrested her Monday for criminally negligent homicide.
“They’re not putting my daughter in jail — they’re not,” said Sacara McIntosh, 43, whose 28-year-old daughter, Makeda McDonald, was also charged with reckless driving and speeding for the 2022 crash.
“They’re demons, those police, detectives, all of them,” McIntosh added. “They will not put my daughter in prison … Not when I am alive.”
McDonald’s arrest follows a lengthy investigation into the crash that claimed the life of 24-year-old Moesha McLaughlin, the founder of The Gxlden Glow, a line of natural skincare products. The two women lived in the same house in Rosedale.
“They grew up together as sisters,” said McIntosh. “Very close. We’re all close.”
Police say McDonald was speeding behind the wheel of her Mercedes-Benz when she slammed into a guardrail on the Cross Island Expressway near the Linden Blvd. exit in Cambria Heights around 3:20 a.m. April 8, 2022.
The force of the impact sent the luxury car into the air, police said. It rolled over several times and struck an overhead light pole. The rear of the car was demolished, the windshield was smashed and the roof was ripped off.
McLaughlin, sitting in the back, was rushed by medics to Long Island Jewish Valley Stream but could not be saved.
Doctors told McIntosh that her daughter would never walk again and that McIntosh’s 32-year-old sister, who was riding shotgun during the crash, would likely die as a result of the brain damage she sustained.
McIntosh sees the hand of God in their miraculous recovery.
“The doctor looked at me and said Makeda will never walk again, she’s paralyzed from the waist down,” said McIntosh. “Look at my daughter — she’s not.
“My sister was brain damaged, bleeding on the brain. They told me that’s it, she’s gonna be a vegetable. She’s here! So God is real.”
But divine intervention hasn’t spared McIntosh’s daughter from the crash’s potential criminal consequences, and the worried mom said her family was completely blindsided by McDonald’s arrest two years after the fact.
“They never ever told me there was gonna be a case,” said McIntosh. “They never mentioned anything like that.”
McIntosh rejected investigators’ claims that her daughter was speeding, saying that rain on the night of the crash would have left McDonald’s foot light on the pedal.
“My daughter doesn’t drive in the rain and she doesn’t drive in snow, so there’s no way she could be speeding,” said McIntosh. “So they are lying. We will all see.”
The furious mom says it’s the ambitions of Queens prosecutors that are fueling the case against her daughter — not justice.
“They’re trying to prove a point and build a case, get whatever promotion they’re looking for, almost two years later!” McIntosh shouted.
Born in Jamaica, McLaughlin immigrated to the U.S. as a young girl, leaving her mother and siblings behind to live under McIntosh’s roof with her cousins in Brooklyn and later in Queens. Her father died when she was 9 years old.
McLaughlin was beloved by McIntosh’s family, according to her aunt, who said she treated her niece like one of her own daughters.
“We kept [my niece] here. We made sure she went to school, got an education and a degree. I threw her graduation party,” said McIntosh. “How are we bad family? How?”
McIntosh pointed to McLaughlin’s room as a testament to their love for her, saying it remains unchanged since the day she died.
“We all miss her. Her room is still there,” McIntosh said. “Nobody still hasn’t been in the room. We don’t touch anything. We don’t move anything.”
McDonald herself remains sick with guilt over her cousin’s death and has struggled to move forward with her life in the wake of 2022’s deadly crash, according to her mom.
“Just last week I was telling her, I know it’s going to be two years next month … but I need you to start pulling yourself back together,” McIntosh said. “Your life doesn’t stop.
“I understand you might think, ‘Oh, my cousin lost her life because I was the driver.’ It could’ve been the other way around.”
A friend of McLaughlin’s, who described the crash victim as her “soulmate,” said she can still feel the pain and horror she experienced the morning after the fatal wreck.
“To this day, I’m just still shocked at how she just left us,” said Christina Coriolan, 27. “It’s something I can never, ever feel good about.”
Coriolan, who met McLaughlin in a summer program before they entered high school, said she was drawn to her friend’s enthusiasm for life, which never failed to inspire those around her.
“She was a role model,” said Coriolan. “Anyone that she knew that was around her, she wanted them to succeed in every aspect of life. She was just an uplifting spirit.”
McLaughlin found work counseling residents at a city homeless shelter after graduating from the College of St. Rose in Albany with a degree in forensic psychology in 2020. A strong drive to better herself led the budding psychologist to enroll in a master’s program sometime before the fatal crash, according to Coriolan and McIntosh.
“She just kept elevating herself,” said Coriolan. “She wanted to do more.”
But McLaughlin’s day job and educational pursuits didn’t stymie her entrepreneurial ventures, which included her skincare brand and a YouTube channel where she posted makeup tutorials, according to Coriolan.
“She loved being in the mirror,” said the friend. “She wanted to do something where she could express herself. Something that she can leave behind for her future kids to take her legacy on with them.
“She had so many plans.”
Coriolan is looking forward to her own college graduation later this year and says she owes the achievement to her late friend, who inspired her to re-enroll after she dropped out following the birth of her first child.
“She wanted better for me,” said Coriolan.
Even two years after the crash, Coriolan fears that her friend’s absence will cast a pall on the ceremony.
“It hurts because graduation is approaching and it’s really tough to have someone that was a role model that motivated you and pushed you … It’s just very depressing that she’s no longer here to see the success,” she said.
McIntosh hopes that prosecutors will drop their case against McDonald, saying her daughter has suffered enough from the guilt and pain of her cousin’s death.
“My daughter is shaking! … They need to leave my child alone,” said McIntosh. “Leave my child and let her move on with her life. Moesha, we love Moesha. And Moesha’s memories we will never get out of our heads. Never. Never. It hurts as heck.”
McDonald was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on Monday and released on $60,000 bond. She’s due back in court March 20.
