Suffolk County, NY - February 2, 2017 - After a day and a half of deliberations, a jury in Central Islip has convicted a Queens man of aggravated vehicular homicide, manslaughter in the second degree, leaving the scene of a fatal crash and tampering with evidence for causing the collision on the Southern State Parkway in 2015 that killed 37 year old Ancio Ostane and his two children, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said.
The driver of the BMW SUV that rear-ended the family’s Toyota RAV4 causing it to burst into flames, Oniel Sharpe Jr., 26, of Queens, will face a maximum of 36 years in state prison when he is sentenced by State Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho on March 22. The district attorney’s office will recommend Sharpe receive the maximum sentence, Spota said.
The trial began January 10. Deliberations began yesterday.
After attending different parties on Long Island, both the victims and the defendant were returning to Queens when the crash occurred at 1:30 on the morning of Sunday July 12, 2015, near exit 41S of the Southern State Parkway. At trial, the jury heard testimony from motorists who described Sharpe as weaving in and out of traffic at speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour during what appeared to be a race with a black BMW.
The collision sent the Ostanes’ vehicle from the main travel lane across a median into the local lanes of the parkway where it ignited. Ostane’s wife, Lucnie Bouaz-Ostane, the sole survivor of the crash, unsuccessfully tried to open the rear passenger door to save her children before the fire fully engulfed the vehicle.
Video evidence presented during the trial showed the defendant at the crash scene reaching into the BMW and retrieving a nearly empty bottle of Patrón tequila from his vehicle and heaving the bottle into the woods where it was later found by State Police investigators.
Sharpe disappeared for four hours – until his arrest by State Police at 5:14 a.m. at the home of the BMW's registered owner, the defendant’s mother, in Rockville Centre.
Sharpe still faces 23 other criminal charges, District Attorney Spota said, crimes related to the discovery of 23 fraudulent credit cards found secreted in a small pocket below the steering wheel of the BMW.
A criminal charge is an accusation. A defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in a court of law.