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Arrest Made in Fatal Henry Hudson Parkway Crash

By Tom Liddy | March 4, 2012 4:39pm
A 26-year-old man was killed when the vehicle he was in crashed on the Henry Hudson Parkway on March 1, 2012.
A 26-year-old man was killed when the vehicle he was in crashed on the Henry Hudson Parkway on March 1, 2012.
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DNAinfo/David Torres

MANHATTAN — A Bronx man was charged with a horrific crash last week on the Henry Hudson Parkway that left one of his passengers, a volunteer gymnastics coach, dead, police said.

Sokol Binakaj, 20, was charged with criminally negligent homicide for the smashup near 96th Street early Thursday morning.

Sources said that speed and weather were a factor in the crash, in which the 2002 Audi struck a guardrail on the right side of the highway and flipped over.

Killed in the crash was Salvatore Cunnginham, 26, of upstate Wappingers Falls. Another passenger, 18, was listed in stable condition at an area hospital.

Cunningham, a graduate of Lehman HS in East Tremont, volunteered as a gymnastics coach around the city and hoped to open up a gym for underprivileged kids.

Sal Cunningham, 26, was killed on March 1, 2012 after the car he was in struck a median on the Henry Hudson Parkway, fire officials said.
Sal Cunningham, 26, was killed on March 1, 2012 after the car he was in struck a median on the Henry Hudson Parkway, fire officials said.
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As a child, he overcame meningitis and the prospect that he would never walk again.

"He was always smiling," his distraught mother, Darlene Cunningham, 52, said Friday. "No matter what was going on, he cheered you up. If you were mad at him, he’d say, ‘You know you love me,’ and you couldn’t be mad anymore."