Queens man charged in hit-and-run death of Michael Agurkis of East Atlantic Beach

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A 27-year-old Queens man has been arrested in connection with a hit-and-run that killed Michael Agurkis of East Atlantic Beach, who was trying to assist a stalled motorist on the Nassau Expressway near Kennedy Airport on Jan. 29.

Agurkis, 51, was described by Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, and his family and friends, as a Good Samaritan, who stopped his car on his way home to help a motorist whose car had stalled at about 8 PM.

Katz said, “A man who was doing a good deed – helping another driver with car trouble – was senselessly killed by another motorist allegedly driving at a high rate of speed. That driver allegedly fled the scene. He did not call 911. He did not stop to help. This kind of behavior is not only callous, but also criminal and the defendant now faces serious charges.”

The hit-and-run driver was identified as Kevin Drawhorne. New York City police said Drawhorne was arrested on Wednesday at 20-28 Seagirt Ave, Queens. They did not say if that was his home.

Drawhorne has been indicted by a Queens County grand jury and arraigned Thursday in Supreme Court on criminally negligent homicide charges and other crimes for allegedly hitting Agurkis and injuring another man. Police did not identify the injured man or state his condition.

Agurkis’s daughter, Amanda, had said in an interview a few days after the accident that her father was the sort of man who enjoyed doing things for other people.

During and after Sandy, she said, her father spent much of his time helping neighbors bail out basements and rebuild destroyed homes. “He knew everything about houses and cars,” his daughter, a middle-school teacher in Lynbrook, said.

Agurkis was born in Freeport and grew up in Long Beach. He did sanitation work on Long Island for about 20 years before becoming a gas technician. He had worked for Local 1049 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He and other members of the union had been working for Haugland Energy Group in Melville.

Amanda Agurkis had seen her father earlier on the night that he died. “He dropped me off at my friend’s house,” she said. “. . . We chatted the whole way there. He was coming over [the next day] to help fix a cabinet. He honked twice, and he was gone.”

Amanda Agurkis said she learned that her father lay on the ground, and that the driver of the van walked over and asked what had happened. The minivan driver told him to call the police. Instead, the van driver ran off.

Along with his daughter, Agurkis is survived by his ex-wife, Suzzane Agurkis, and two sons, Michael and Thomas, all of Valley Stream.

other crimes for allegedly hitting and killing one man and injuring another on January 29, 2021.

Drawhorne was named in a seven-count indictment charging him with criminally negligent homicide, leaving the scene of an incident without reporting, operating or driving a motor vehicle without a license, operating a motor vehicle with a tinted window and driving in excess of the maximum speed limit.

If convicted, Drawhorne faces up to 7 years in prison.