WILLIAMSBURG — A college junior out celebrating her 21st birthday was killed when a drunk NYPD traffic agent driving the car she was in crashed on the Williamsburg Bridge early Thursday morning, police said.
Amanda Miner, who turned 21 on Wednesday, was in the backseat of off-duty agent Stefan Hoyte's 2013 Infiniti when he pulled onto the bridge from Manhattan about 3:14 a.m., lost control of the car and slammed into a barrier and a support column, cleaving the car in two, an NYPD spokesman said.
Miner, of Williamsburg, was pronounced dead at the scene.
"That was my baby, my beautiful girl, big heart and now she's gone," said Miner's mother, Virginia Cabrera-Miner.
"I love her. I'll miss her and I'll never see her again," the grief-stricken mother said.
Virginia Cabrera-Miner showed reporters a photo of her daughter who died in a car crash. (DNAinfo/Noah Hurowitz)
Video of the aftermath shows half of the car rolled into a crumpled ball of metal on a snowy patch of the roadway.
Hoyte, 26, and a 24-year-old NYPD male traffic agent sitting in the front passenger's seat were treated for minor injuries at Bellevue Hospital, sources said.
Hoyte, who sources said had a blood alcohol level of .103 percent, was charged with vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, drunk driving and speeding, police said. The legal limit is .08 percent.
The DMV said Hoyte was involved in a car crash that injured someone in Brooklyn in August, but details on that crash were not immediately available.
He was arraigned in connection to the Williamsburg Bridge crash on Thursday and ordered held on $100,000 bail, jail records show. He's due back in court on March 21, records show
Miner, the youngest of three girls, was a junior at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. She hoped to one day work as a social worker, her mother said.
Miner came home from college and spent her birthday with her mom in Williamsburg, the mom said.
"We went to see [Wicked], came home and had dinner," her mother said.
"Being that age and away from school I haven't been able to spend a lot of time with her so I was glad that we had three solid hours together. So it was great, it was a great experience bonding. I just can't believe she's gone," Cabrera-Miner added.
Miner then went out to celebrate on her own, according to her mother who said she would have tried to convince her to stay home if she knew how it was going to turn out.
"I just say if you're going to drink, don't drive, and if you don't drive, don't get in the car with someone that's been drinking. I always say that," Cabrera-Miner said.
Miner's mother hasn't been herself since three detectives told her about the young woman's death, she said.
Still, she clings to her daughter's aspirations, heartened by the kindness she showed while she was alive.
"She had a good heart, everybody that knew her loved her. Since she was little she was all about helping people, standing up for the little guy," Cabrera-Miner said.
"She could've changed this world, she changed mine. But now we'll never see how far she could've gone," the mother added.
