Xackery Irving/Shutterstock You'd think that if you ran over a sleeping man in a park with your car and dragged him to his death, only for the court discovered that you'd been doing your makeup at the time of the crash, you'd be screwed. Time to see how much you really remember from the first four seasons of "Orange Is The New Black," because you aren't getting out of that one. Which may be true for a normie, but according to Streetsblog, New York announced the police officer accused of doing exactly that will not face charges. In the report that New York Attorney General Letitia James' office released April 14, the state doesn't deny that, at 4:37 p.m on August 23, 2025, NYPD Officer Levonje Devone was driving with her partner Officer Keisha Compere when she killed Mr. Huerta Gonzalez with her car. The crash took place in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the largest park in Queens and home to the Queens Zoo, Queens Theater, and Queens Museum. The report also adds: At the time of his death, Mr. Huerta Gonzalez was lying on a roadway by the Queens Theater. The road was not open to civilian car traffic but was used by NYPD cars, Parks Department cars, and the cars of some employees of the various attractions located in the park. There were no traffic signals on the roadway. Additionally, the report acknowledges that Officer Devone "had what appeared to be an open tube of lip gloss between the thumb and index finger of her right hand as it gripped the wheel." However, in its report, the Attorney General's Office of Special Investigation declined to recommend any charges against the officer, writing that: Having thoroughly investigated the facts and analyzed the law, OSI concludes a prosecutorwould not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer driving the car that ranover Mr. Huerta Gonzalez committed a crime and, therefore, will not seek charges and closesthe matter with this report. 'A person!' Gary Hershorn/Getty Images Basically, yes, Officer Devone hit Gonzalez with her car and killed him. Yes, she was distracted trying to put her lip gloss on while she was driving. But does the state consider an officer of the law killing a man while applying makeup behind the wheel to be "criminally negligent" behavior worthy of prosecution? According to AG James, no, it does not. So nothing will be done about an agent of the state killing a man not accused of any crimes punishable by the death penalty. But what makes this situation even worse is that Streetsblog reports witnesses had already called 911 and tried to warn Officer Devone: But onlookers at the scene certainly believed Devone was distracted, as at least one shouted at her to stop as she drove towards the sleeping Gonzalez, whose presence in the roadway had been flagged for the NYPD a minute earlier by two Mets employees, the report revealed. "A person!" someone can be heard shouting on NYPD body-worn camera footage of the incident released by the attorney general's office last week. A nearby police lieutenant flagged down Devone, who joined the force in 2021, to get her to stop before the crash, according to James's Office of Special Investigations. But investigators concluded that they could not clear the legal burden of proof that Devone was criminally negligent. Bystanders reportedly created enough of a scene before Devone hit Gonzalez that NYPD Lieutenant Maritza Meade told OSI: she heard a commotion and turned and saw a police car slowly moving along United Nations Avenue South directly in the path of a person who was lying on the roadway. She said she rushed toward the driver's side of the police car to tell the officers to stop. Officer Compere said she and Officer Devone looked to the left and saw Lt. Meade gesturing and trying to communicate with them, but Officer Compere was not clear what she was saying and thought Lt. Meade was telling them to roll down the car window. Officer Compere said she also heard someone yelling "hey" from somewhere behind the car. Hit and then dragged ZHMURCHAK/Shutterstock The worst part of this entire situation is that Officer Devone didn't hit Gonzalez at a high speed and kill him quickly. The NYPD's Collision Investigation Squad concluded she hit him at 7.14 mph. They ran over him slowly, and CIS determined Officer Devone's car dragged him 10 feet before stopping. Officer Compere told OSI "she heard what sounded like low screams and moaning coming from under her seat." And despite having just been woken up by being run over, Gonzalez was reportedly alert enough to answer basic questions and provide his name. Officers then used a jack to lift the police cruiser off Gonzalez's body and place him in an ambulance at 4:47 p.m. However, a few minutes later, he became unresponsive, and even though they arrived at the hospital by 5:05 p.m., by 5:14 p.m., he had been pronounced dead. An autopsy later found that, while he had been intoxicated at the time Officer Devone ran him over, Gonzalez's cause of death was "blunt force trauma of torso," with the manner of death listed as "struck and run over by police vehicle." Had Officer Devone not hit Gonzalez with her car, he likely would have woken up hungover but otherwise fine. Not dead, that's for sure. According to the NYAG's office, however, there was "noindication that she was unable to steer because of what was in her hand," and therefore she won't face legal consequences for running a man over and dragging him to his death. Do we really want to live in a society where killing people is okay if you claim it was an oopsie? And what does it say about you if your reaction is, "It's fine that he died. He was doing something he wasn't supposed to do?"
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