A DRUNK driver has pleaded guilty to the vehicular manslaughter of a Greek Cypriot woman in New York.
Daryush Omar, 25, is expected to spend ten and a half years in prison after crashing into a taxi in his SUV, killing both occupants; driver Bessy Velasqez and Panayiota Demetriou, 30, a graduate in psychology student from Cyprus on November 16, 2008.
Demetriou had just completed her Doctoral thesis, and was returning home from a night of celebration with friends when the accident happened. Her best friend Eleni Toumarides, with whom she had been out celebrating said: “I feel very lucky to have lived her last moments with her, knowing how happy she was”.
Omar admitted to being drunk when he collided with the taxi at an intersection. Prosecutors added that he had jumped a red light and that his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit.
This plea has come as some consolation to Demetriou’s friends and family. Delimarkos Fletcher, a long time friend of Demetriou, told the Associated Press “What we do get a little bit of solace for is that he has admitted full guilt.”
Omar has had a complex and murky legal history, and under different circumstances he could well have been imprisoned or expelled from the United States in the months prior to the crash.
He had been arrested and arraigned on murder and robbery charges, which still stand. Manhattan Prosecutors claim that he was one of three men who brutally murdered and robbed a financial analyst in May 2006. The victim, Thomas Whitney Jr died after being kicked and punched to death on a Manhattan street.
However, prosecutors were unable to obtain an indictment and so the case stalled.
Following his arrest for the murder, he was taken into immigration custody. US authorities sought his deportation, but could not prove their claim that he was an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan, and in 2008 he was released.
In an exclusive interview with New York’s Daily News, Demetriou’s father, Demetris said “She was destined for greater things. I don’t believe it was her fate or destiny to die there. Her life was taken by somebody who was irresponsible.”
He added “life goes on, but life will never, ever be the same. Our life has been blackened forever. She was the shining star of our house.” He had been in New York to collect his daughter’s Doctoral certificate.
Panayiota is buried in Limassol and a hall at her former secondary school has been named in her honour.
