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ONLY ON CLIFFVIEW PILOT: Photos taken by a CLIFFVIEW PILOT contributor show the aftermath of a road rage incident between two drivers speeding up the Garden State Parkway on Sunday morning led to a pair of crashes near Exit 168 in Washington Township that killed an unidentified woman. Both men are jailed on vehicular homicide charges. READ MORE….
The incident between Thomas J. Vanderweit, 27, of Saddle Brook, and John C. Emili, a 21-year-old power weight-lifter and former Clarkstown North High School football player from New City, N.Y., began near the Route 17 exit around 10:45 Sunday morning, Trooper Christopher Kay told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Several witnesses told police both vehicles were being operated erratically, “making numerous lane changes, tailgating and travelling in excess of the posted speed limit,” Kay said.
Near milepost 167, Emili, who was tailgating
Vanderweit’s 2007 Chevy Trail Blazer with his 2004 Honda Pilot, tried passing him on an exit lane and lost control of the vehicle, the trooper told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.The Pilot careened off the road, hit a guardrail and then hurtled back onto the Parkway, where it overturned and rammed into the side of the Blazer, which left the roadway itself and smashed a guardrail, Kay said.
Annetta Billingy, 63, of Teaneck, an unrestrained rear passenger in Emili’s Honda, was ejected, he said.
At the scene around 11:15 this morning (CLIFFVIEW PILOT photos)
A North Star Medi-Vac helicopter landed at the exit ramp and took the woman to Hackensack University Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, Kay said.
The parkway was closed when the helicopter was brought in around 11:15 a.m.
Both men are being held on $100,000 bail each in the Bergen County Jail, charaged with vehicular homicide.
Emili, a 2009 graduate of Clarkstown North High School, attends Arizona State University.
Kay singled out the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office’s Fatal Accident Unit for its work on the investigation.
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