{"id":343123,"date":"2026-09-10T19:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T19:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/343123\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T19:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T19:38:11","slug":"tesla-driver-accused-of-killing-friend-in-drunk-nyc-crash-claims-no-memory-of-driving-on-42nd-st","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/343123\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla driver accused of killing friend in drunk NYC crash claims no memory of driving on 42nd St."},"content":{"rendered":"

A Tesla driver accused of killing her friend when she slammed into scaffolding on a Midtown sidewalk<\/a> told cops she remembered knocking back several drinks before getting behind the wheel, but not driving on 42nd St., Manhattan prosecutors said Thursday.<\/p>\n

The disturbing admission by driver Alejandra Parahsingh, 27, emerged at her Manhattan Criminal Court arraignment after midnight, where prosecutors charged her with vehicular manslaughter for the death of her passenger and longtime friend, Elise Suomi \u2014 a new mom to a 3-month-old baby girl \u2014 and leaving the scene of a fatal accident without reporting it.<\/p>\n

Assistant District Attorney Sloane Salina said Parahsingh spent Tuesday night drinking at two bars in Inwood before getting into the car to drive downtown. Barreling down E. 42nd St. after 2:30 a.m., she careened off the road and mounted the sidewalk between Madison and Park Aves. before slamming into scaffolding, a USPS mailbox and a bus stop pole, the prosecutor said.<\/p>\n

Suomi, 27, suffered a \u201ccatastrophic head injury\u201d in the crash, yet Parahsingh kept driving, Salina said.<\/p>\n

\"EliseElise Suomi. (Obtained by Daily News)<\/p>\n

A cyclist who witnessed the incident pursued Parahsingh as she veered back onto the street and continued to drive east before hitting the brakes at E. 42nd St. and Second Ave., according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n

Salina said in court that responding officers were met with a struggle from Parahsingh \u201cin a highly intoxicated state,\u201d with the criminal complaint further detailing that she reeked of alcohol and had bloodshot eyes.\u00a0Medics rushed Suomi to Bellevue Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Neither woman had been wearing a seatbelt.<\/p>\n

A full four hours after the crash, Parahsingh, who only suffered minor injuries, blew a 0.229% on a breathalyzer test at Bellevue, almost three times the legal limit, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

When she was taken to the Midtown South Precinct, she admitted to consuming multiple alcoholic beverages in the hours before the crash, the complaint details, but \u201cdid not remember driving the car on 42nd Street.\u201d She said she lived in Connecticut, where she volunteered that she\u2019d had a recent brush with the law.<\/p>\n

\"EliseWreckage at the scene where the Tesla, which authorities said was driven by Alejandra Parahsingh, crashed into scaffolding, a bus stop pole and at least one USPS mailbox near the intersection of E. 42nd St. and Madison Ave. in Manhattan early Wednesday. (Lincoln Anderson \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

According to cops, the Tesla was registered to a woman who lives in Waterbury, Conn. Parahsingh didn\u2019t own it and hadn\u2019t been driving very long, per a February 2020 post on her Instagram page showing her on an ATV in the desert in Abu Dhabi, captioned, \u201cFirst time driving anything\u201d beside a smiley face and a heart emoji. Hours before Wednesday\u2019s horrific crash, she uploaded a photo of a tequila bottle.<\/p>\n

Judge Jeffrey Gershuny held Parahsingh on $50,000 cash bail. Jail records showed she was being held at Rikers on Thursday morning. The Daily News reached out to her lawyer for comment.<\/p>\n

\"AlejandraAlejandra Parahsingh is pictured in police custody leaving the NYPD’s Midtown South Precinct stationhouse in Manhattan on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026. Parahsingh was allegedly behind the wheel during a Midtown Manhattan Tesla crash earlier in the day. (Barry Williams \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

In an interview with The News on Wednesday<\/a>, the victim\u2019s devastated brother, who asked to be referred to only by his first name, Angel, said Suomi worked unimaginably hard to escape poverty and make a good life for her baby daughter after growing up in shelters with her six siblings.<\/p>\n

Suomi was working toward becoming a certified nursing assistant at Swedish Institute College of Health Sciences and worked as a home health aide.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was very motivated to beat the odds,\u201d Angel said. \u201cShe had it together. She had her plans ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"EliseWreckage at the scene where the Tesla, which authorities said was driven by Alejandra Parahsingh, crashed into scaffolding, a bus stop pole and at least one USPS mailbox near the intersection of E. 42nd St. and Madison Ave. in Manhattan early Wednesday. (Lincoln Anderson \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

Suomi\u2019s sister Jasmine Ortiz lamented that her \u201cbeautiful\u201d baby niece wasn\u2019t old enough to hold onto memories of her mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s only 3 months old,\u201d Ortiz said. \u201cShe won\u2019t remember.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ortiz, who also works as a home health aide, said her sister had covered her shift earlier that evening until 9:30 p.m. and that she didn\u2019t know how she ended up out so late with Parahsingh, who Suomi had known since high school.<\/p>\n

She was furious to hear Parahsingh kept driving after the crash instead of stopping to call for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would you keep on going?\u201d she asked. \u201cShe deserves whatever is coming for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

A GoFundMe by Suomi\u2019s family<\/a> had raised more than $8,000 toward its goal of $14,000 by Thursday afternoon. Donations will go toward her funeral expenses and the future education of her baby daughter, for whom she was the primary provider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tesla driver accused of killing her friend when she slammed into scaffolding on a Midtown sidewalk told…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[128631,128632,128630,128633,125975,9545,547,360,9,56,63,65,64,27699,17101],"class_list":["post-343123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-42nd-st","tag-alejandra-parahsingh","tag-drunken-crash","tag-elise-suomi","tag-fatal-car-crash","tag-manhattan-criminal-court","tag-manhattan-district-attorney","tag-midtown","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-tesla","tag-vehicular-homicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}