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Daniel Coppolo, 33, has been sentenced to a term of between five to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty earlier this year to manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident without reporting it and tampering with physical evidence related to a homicide, Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced on Monday, June 17.
Singas said that Coppolo also pleaded guilty to third-degree robbery for a separate incident when he used force against a security guard to escape the area after shoplifting.
At approximately 5 p.m. on Nov. 9, 2017, the student, Taranjit Parmar, of Levittown, was driving a Jeep Cherokee eastbound on the turnpike, and she struck Coppolo near the intersection fo Gardiners Avenue in Levittown as he pulled his pickup out of the exit near Ultra Gas Station.
According to Singas, after the collision, both pulled into the parking lot near the gas station. Parmar exited her Jeep and called her mother. While on the phone with her mother, Parmar yelled for the driver to stop and grabbed Coppolo’s truck as he started to move. Coppolo drove through the parking lot, dragged Parmar and ultimately ran her over before fleeing the scene by driving the wrong way on Hempstead Turnpike.
A passerby saw the incident and called the police. Parmar was transported to the hospital by Nassau County Police paramedics in cardiac arrest and died later that night.
Singas said that the investigation led police to Coppolo’s truck, which was found in a parking lot of Target in Westbury, where Coppolo had been arrested for forcibly stealing items from the store. Upon inspection of the truck, rubbing compound was found applied to the area that had been damaged in the initial collision.
Coppolo was arrested on Dec. 23, 2017.
“Taranjit Parmar was a beautiful young woman with her entire life ahead of her when she was senselessly killed by this defendant’s recklessness,” Singas said. “It is incomprehensible that this defendant could selfishly take the promising young life of an 18-year-old woman over a trivial fender bender. Our heartfelt sympathies go out to the Parmar family for their unbearable loss and we hope that today’s sentence brings them some solace and deters other reckless drivers.”
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