NYPD officials: Hempstead mother kills officer while driving drunk

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On Monday evening, April 26, Jessica Beauvais, of Hempstead, was speaking on her weekly podcast about the recent police killings of unarmed Black Americans. Hours later, New York Police Department officials said, she killed a police officer while driving under the influence in Queens.

The 32-year-old mother of a 13-year-old signed off the podcast by saying, “I will see you guys next Monday at 6:30 p.m. back on Face the Reality Radio on the Instagram and on the Facebook, and until then, f**k the police.”

Before recording her regular Monday podcast, she was reportedly drinking. She later said she had two glasses of wine before she drove her son to a place in Hempstead Village, despite having a suspended license. She then headed to her Brooklyn broadcasting location and allegedly smoked marijuana, drank wine from a bottle while also vaping during the podcast and downed shots of an unknown substance.

After midnight, police said, she got into her car and headed west on the Long Island Expressway. Between 1 and 2 a.m. on April 27, her speeding vehicle approached a crash scene on the exit ramp from the LIE to the Clearview Expressway. Flashing police lights and orange police cones impeded her path. Anastasios Tsakos, 43, of Northport, a 14-year NYPD veteran and father of two young children, was directing traffic around the accident scene.

Beauvais swerved to avoid the cones and lights. Tsakos tried to dive out of the way, but he was reportedly struck so forcefully that his body crushed the hood of Beauvais’s car and smashed her windshield, and he was sent hurtling a hundred feet down the road.

Without slowing down, police said, Beauvais sped several exits farther before racing up the Horace Harding Expressway exit and grinding to a halt on a sidewalk. Police vehicles surrounded her. She backed her car up and twice struck a police vehicle behind her before yielding to arrest.

Meanwhile, Tsakos was rushed to New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital, where he died.

Beauvais was held at the 107th Precinct in Queens. Two hours later, her blood alcohol level measured .15, nearly twice the legal limit of .08, authorities said.

On April 27, as she was led in handcuffs from the 107th Precinct to the location where she would be arraigned, a News 12 reporter asked Beauvais what had happened. “I’m sorry,” Beauvais said. Asked what she was sorry for, she shouted tearfully, “I’m sorry that I hit him and that he is dead.”

Beauvais is being held without bail on 13 charges, among them second-degree manslaughter and vehicular manslaughter. If convicted, she faces 15 years in prison.