A Cop on Her Way to Work. A Pickup Doing 70 Through a Red Light. Now a Guilty Plea.

At about 6 a.m. on January 31, 2026, Nassau County Police Officer Patricia Espinosa, 42, was driving to work through the intersection of Route 347 and Alexander Avenue in St. James, Long Island. She never made it. A Chevrolet Silverado ran the red light at roughly 70 miles per hour in a 30 zone and slammed into her SUV. She was pronounced dead at Stony Brook University Hospital.

The driver was Matthew Smith, then 20, of Hauppauge. Prosecutors say he had been drinking for hours at multiple Long Island establishments and that a chemical test put his blood-alcohol content at .20 — two and a half times the legal limit. On June 11, 2026, Smith, now 21, stood before a Suffolk County judge and changed his plea to guilty.

He admitted to aggravated vehicular homicide and a stack of related felonies. He is expected to be sentenced on July 20 to 7⅓ to 22 years in state prison. Espinosa — an immigrant from Ecuador, a nine-year veteran of the department’s Fifth Precinct, and the mother of an infant daughter — is survived by a husband who is also a Nassau County police officer.

• .20 BAC — Smith's blood-alcohol content per a chemical test — two and a half times New York's .08 legal limit · Source: Suffolk County DA, CBS New York
• ~70 mph — speed through a 30-mph zone against a red light at the moment of impact; his passenger told police he had earlier hit 125 mph · Source: Suffolk County DA, PIX11
• 7⅓–22 years — the prison term Smith is expected to receive at his July 20 sentencing after pleading guilty · Source: Suffolk County DA, News 12
• 15 counts — in the grand-jury indictment, including two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide and aggravated DWI · Source: Suffolk County DA

On June 11, 2026, in a Suffolk County courtroom, Matthew Smith changed his plea from not guilty to guilty. According to the office of Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney (R), Smith admitted to aggravated vehicular homicide, vehicular manslaughter, aggravated vehicular assault, assault, and aggravated driving while intoxicated. As part of the deal he also agreed to forfeit the pickup truck he was driving. He is expected to be sentenced on July 20 to a term of 7⅓ to 22 years in state prison, followed by post-release supervision.

“While nothing will restore what the victims and their families and colleagues have lost,” Tierney said, “we hope that this plea provides them with some measure of justice.” Because Smith pleaded guilty, the plea spares Espinosa’s family the ordeal of a trial. The defendant’s allocution — his sworn account of what he did — became the official record of the night.

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Prosecutors and Smith’s own allocution describe a long night of drinking across Long Island. According to the family’s statement and court accounts, Smith bought and consumed alcohol at multiple establishments — among them a Hauppauge liquor store, a Buffalo Wild Wings in Miller Place, and bars including one in Patchogue he is said to have entered through a back door without showing identification. He was 20 years old at the time, below New York’s legal drinking age. He and a friend then went to Jake’s 58 Casino Hotel before getting back on the road.

When they left the casino, Smith’s passenger later told police, he was “driving crazy,” reaching speeds of up to 125 mph on the way to the intersection where Espinosa was waiting at a green light. The passenger survived but suffered serious injuries, including pelvic and spinal fractures and a severe head laceration, prosecutors said.

“A police officer dedicated to protecting this community was simply on her way to work when her life was tragically taken.”

Suffolk County DA Raymond A. Tierney (R)

Patricia Espinosa was 42. She emigrated from Ecuador at age 21, learned English after she arrived, and built a life around public service. She served as a New York State correctional officer before joining the Nassau County Police Department in December 2017, where she was a nine-year veteran assigned to the Fifth Precinct. Policing ran in her family: her husband, Officer Francisco Malaga, is also a Nassau County police officer, and her brothers serve in law enforcement as well.

She leaves behind that husband and a young daughter. “This family is destroyed,” said Thomas Shevlin, president of the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association, after the crash. At her funeral, hundreds of officers from across the region lined the streets to salute a colleague killed not in the line of fire, but on an ordinary commute to a shift she would never work.

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A Suffolk County grand jury had indicted Smith on 15 counts, headlined by two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide — Class B felonies — along with vehicular manslaughter, aggravated vehicular assault, second-degree assault, aggravated driving while intoxicated, reckless endangerment, and a string of traffic infractions. Aggravated vehicular homicide is the most serious vehicular charge New York provides for, reserved for killings committed while intoxicated and aggravated by conduct such as reckless speed.

The expected sentence — 7⅓ to 22 years — reflects the indeterminate structure New York uses for felonies of this class: a minimum that governs parole eligibility and a maximum that caps the term. For a defendant who was 20 years old at the time, it means he could be released as early as his late twenties or held into his early forties. The forfeiture of his truck is a small, concrete coda to a case in which the larger loss can never be made whole.

In a statement released through their attorney, Howard S. Hershenhorn, the Espinosa family praised investigators and prosecutors — calling their work “nothing short of extraordinary” — but trained their attention on the businesses that served a 20-year-old alcohol through the night. The family noted that there were multiple points that evening when an establishment could have refused to serve an underage patron, and that had even one of them done what the law required, Patricia Espinosa might still be alive.

The family has signaled it intends to pursue civil litigation against the named establishments. New York’s Dram Shop Act allows victims to sue businesses that unlawfully serve alcohol to a minor or to a visibly intoxicated person who then causes injury — a legal lever that exists precisely because the chain of responsibility in a drunk-driving death rarely begins at the steering wheel.

The criminal case has, in the legal sense, resolved. Smith’s guilty plea removes the uncertainty of a trial and fixes the expected sentence within a known range; the July 20 hearing will make it final, and it is the moment when Espinosa’s family will be able to deliver victim-impact statements directly to the court. What remains open is the civil reckoning — the Dram Shop claims the family has promised against the bars and stores that, by their account, kept an underage driver drinking until 6 in the morning.

The verifiable record is narrow and grim: a veteran officer dead on her way to work, a 20-year-old’s long night of drinking, a .20 blood-alcohol level, a red light run at 70 miles per hour, and a plea that puts a number on the years a man will spend in prison but not on what a husband and a daughter lost. We will update this page after the July 20 sentencing.

“Had even one of those establishments done what the law required, Patricia Espinosa might still be alive today.”

The Espinosa family · statement through attorney Howard S. Hershenhorn · June 11, 2026

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