Former Croton firefighter pleads guilty to leaving the scene of a fatal accident. Victim's mother accuses village of coverup.
In a plea deal, Nicholas Edwards-Ambos will avoid jail time. His attorney says he was not responsible for the death of Richard Lent. Mayor Pugh defends the integrity of Croton’s police investigation.
At about 2:30 pm on Saturday, July 15 of last year, Peekskill resident Richard Lent, Jr. died in a fiery motorcycle crash on Route 9 near Senasqua Road in Croton. Initial media reports, citing Croton police, suggested that Lent had been struck by a car, whose driver then fled the accident. However, in combing over the scene, investigators from the Croton police, Westchester County police, and New York state police found pieces of a side mirror that allowed them to identify the vehicle and arrest its driver two days later.
At first, the name of the driver was not publicly released. But a number of weeks later, News 12 Westchester identified the driver as Croton firefighter Nicholas Edwards-Ambos. This week, Edwards-Ambos pled guilty in State Supreme Court to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident, after a police investigation found that he was not at fault for Lent’s death. The charge can bring up to seven years in prison. But in a plea deal with Westchester county prosecutors, he will spend five years on probation and have a felony conviction on his record.
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