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Oct. 15, 2021 By Allie Griffin
A Far Rockway man was sentenced to prison Thursday after pleading guilty to vehicular homicide charges stemming from a drunk driving crash that killed his passenger.
Nicholas Thompson, 36, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half to 17 years in prison for killing 32-year-old Jolenna Favor last year when he crashed his car through a fence into trees.
Thompson was driving a BMW along Rockaway Boulevard at more than 90 miles per hour on Sept. 26, 2020 at around 6:45 p.m. when he lost control of the car near Brookville Boulevard, according to the charges.
He veered off the road at 97 miles per hour and drove through a metal fence into a thicket of trees.
Thompson was able to exit the vehicle when police arrived at the scene, but Favor was still inside with severe head and body trauma. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Officers at the scene noticed that Thompson had bloodshot, watery eyes; slurred speech and smelled of alcohol. A court-ordered blood test showed that he had a blood alcohol content almost twice the legal limit at the time of the crash, according to the charges.
“The defendant was both intoxicated and speeding – a deadly combination – when he crashed through a fence and slammed into a tree killing his passenger,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said in a statement. “This selfish act of driving while drunk puts everyone on the road at risk.”
Police later learned that Thompson’s driver’s license had been previously revoked by the state of Pennsylvania in March 2015 due to multiple driving-while-intoxicated incidents.
Thompson pleaded guilty last month to aggravated vehicular homicide before Queens Supreme Court Justice Gene Lopez. Lopez sentenced him to eight-and-a-half to 17 years in prison.
