Erasmo Huerta Gonzalez was asleep on a roadway inside Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, New York, on the afternoon of August 23, 2025. He was not in a traffic lane open to the public. The road served police vehicles, parks department cars, and staff from the venues located in the park. There were no traffic signals.
At 4:36 p.m., two employees of the New York Mets called 911 to report a man lying on the road. One minute later, NYPD Officer Levonje Devone drove her patrol car directly over him.
The report released by New York Attorney General Letitia James' Office of Special Investigations on April 14 does not dispute any of this. It confirms that Officer Devone was holding what appeared to be an open tube of lip gloss between the thumb and index finger of her right hand as it gripped the steering wheel at the moment of impact.
It also confirms she will not face charges.
What the witnesses saw... and what they did about it
This is the part that deserves to sit with you for a moment.
Before Officer Devone reached Gonzalez, at least one bystander shouted at her to stop. Two Mets employees had already called 911 a minute earlier to report the man's location. NYPD Lieutenant Maritza Meade, on foot nearby, saw the patrol car moving slowly in the direction of the man lying on the road and physically rushed toward the driver's side to wave it down.
According to the AG's report, Lieutenant Meade told investigators she heard a commotion, looked up, and saw the police car heading directly toward the man. She ran to the driver's window. Officer Devone's partner, Officer Keisha Compere, told investigators they both saw Lieutenant Meade gesturing at them from the left side and trying to communicate... but thought she was asking them to roll down the window.
Someone on bystander footage can be heard shouting two words: "A person!"
The car kept moving.
The impact
The NYPD's Collision Investigation Squad determined Officer Devone struck Gonzalez at 7.14 miles per hour. She did not hit him at speed and kill him instantly. She drove over him slowly, and the car dragged him ten feet before stopping.
Officer Compere told investigators she heard what sounded like low screams and moaning coming from under her seat.
Officers used a jack to lift the patrol car off Gonzalez's body. An ambulance was called at 4:47 p.m. He was alert enough when it arrived to answer basic questions and provide his name.
He arrived at hospital at 5:05 p.m. He was pronounced dead at 5:14 p.m.
The medical examiner listed his cause of death as blunt force trauma to the torso. Manner of death: struck and run over by a police vehicle.
He had been intoxicated at the time. Had Officer Devone not hit him, the AG's report notes, he would almost certainly have woken up with a hangover and gone home.
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The decision
The AG's office conducted what it described as a thorough investigation. Its conclusion was that a prosecutor could not establish criminal negligence beyond reasonable doubt because there was "no indication that she was unable to steer because of what was in her hand."
Read that again slowly.
She was applying lip gloss while driving a police vehicle on a route where she had been told... either verbally or by the visible presence of a woman running toward her window... that a person was lying directly in her path. Witnesses called 911. A lieutenant ran at the car. Someone screamed. The car kept moving at 7 miles per hour until it hit the man, ran over him, and dragged him ten feet.
The state of New York looked at all of that and concluded: not criminal.
Officer Devone joined the NYPD in 2021. She remains on the force.
The question nobody in authority is asking
This story has a straightforward automotive element: distracted driving kills people. Every year, enforcement campaigns remind ordinary drivers that applying makeup at the wheel is dangerous, illegal and potentially fatal. Drivers have been prosecuted and imprisoned for exactly this kind of death in the United States.
The legal system applies differently when the driver carries a badge. The AG's office did not dispute the distraction. It did not dispute the warnings. It did not dispute the outcome. It concluded that the combination of those facts did not clear the legal threshold for criminal negligence.
What it cannot explain... and what the family of Erasmo Huerta Gonzalez now lives with... is how a man lying in a road, flagged to police sixty seconds before impact, surrounded by people shouting warnings, ends up dead under a police car with no legal consequence for the officer behind the wheel.
If you want to follow more cases like this, we track enforcement and accountability stories at GaukMotorBuzz.com/drivers-revenge.
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