Long Island has at least 50,000 unlicensed drivers. They're more likely to cause fatal crashes.

Nicolette Franzone was just a week shy of her 13th birthday when she and her sister, Angelica, went to their first sleepover. After a fun night, the girls piled into a car around noon to see a movie. An older girlfriend drove, and at the last minute, Nicolette changed seats with her sister.

As they entered the intersection with the green light at County Road 101 and Woodside Avenue in Medford, Nicolette saw a black car hurtling toward them. She gasped, saw blood and black smoke and was propelled into the passenger door. She looked back and called her sister's name. Angelica didn't answer.

An ambulance arrived. Nicolette asked an emergency medical technician, "Tell me, and be honest, is my sister going to die?" The EMT didn't answer.

Four days later, the family gathered around Angelica's hospital bed and decided to take her off life support. She was 14.

The driver of the car that hit them, Stephen Catalano, should not have been on the road, according to court documents. His license had been suspended seven times, and he had a pending suspension. Four days earlier, a judge had admonished him not to drive with a suspended license anymore.

Research shows that unlicensed drivers have a greater risk of causing fatal crashes like the one that claimed Angelica's life. Driving with a suspended or revoked license is typically treated as relatively minor and rarely rises to the level of a criminal offense, according to state data. Even when drivers are arrested on a more serious charge of aggravated unlicensed driving, the cases typically are disposed of at arraignment or defendants are released on their own recognizance. Among all unlicensed drivers ticketed statewide, one in five are on Long Island.

"It's an offense that is not taken as seriously as it needs to be," said Robert Scopatz, a senior transportation analyst for VHB Inc., an engineering and planning firm based in Watertown, Massachusetts. "We don't really notice them until it's too late."

Nationally, unlicensed drivers have four times the normal risk of causing a fatal crash, said Scopatz, who has studied drivers without valid licenses.

On Long Island, unlicensed drivers account for 2% of all drivers, but represent 14% of drivers involved in fatal crashes, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles and data provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

"The bottom line is these are not good drivers," he said. "They lack skill, and they lack judgment."

DMV data shows there are at least 50,000 drivers on Long Island with suspended or revoked licenses or who never obtained a license. Even though it's illegal to drive with a suspended or revoked license, many of those drivers continue driving, records show. Of the 735,000 tickets issued for unlicensed driving in New York from 2020 through 2023, one in five were issued on Long Island, according to DMV records.

And the problem is getting worse. DMV records show that the number of tickets issued to unlicensed drivers has increased statewide by 24% since 2020. On Long Island, there has been an even greater increase: 32%.

Last year, in Suffolk County alone, at least 18 drivers without valid licenses were involved in crashes that killed 10 people and caused serious injury to 12 others. In 2023, 16 drivers without valid licenses were involved in crashes that killed seven people and caused serious injury to 12 more, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office.

In Nassau County, 19 drivers without valid licenses have been involved in crashes that killed 14 people and seriously injured seven others since 2022, according to the Nassau County District Attorney's Office.

"Long Island is Ground Zero for this," said former Assemb. Fred Thiele.

The main reason is the lack of public transportation, he said.

"To work and live on Long Island, you have to have a car. People make a judgment. Are they going to run the risk for getting caught for unlicensed driving where the penalty is not that great or are they going to lose their job?" he said.

"In vehicular crimes, you, me, anybody, any community, every family, you are subject to the recklessness and the dangerousness of the people around you," said Maureen McCormick, a longtime vehicular crimes prosecutor who currently is a special assistant district attorney for legislative initiatives in the Suffolk district attorney's office.

"If you're not afraid, you should be."

A family's grief

The crash that killed Angelica Nappi on Feb. 19, 2008, gutted her family.

Her mother, Dawn Nappi, would shut herself in a closet, crying. She didn't want her family to hear her because she needed to be their "rock," she said in an interview.

Angelica's father stood at the foot of a staircase in their home, calling for her to come down. Nicolette felt fury at the man who hit them, Franzone said.

The marriage didn't survive.

Catalano, the driver, had already served jail time on six occasions for aggravated unlicensed driving. He had a driving while intoxicated conviction and a separate one for possession of a controlled substance, according to court records.

The fact that he had such a long history of driving with a suspended license stunned Nappi. "How in the world can anybody be allowed on the road with a record like that?" she said.

At the time of the crash, Catalano appeared "dazed and disoriented" and told a police officer he had taken heroin, according to his arrest report.

At a subsequent court hearing, then-prosecutor Jeremy Scileppi, told the court that he had been told Catalano's blood sample did not contain any illegal drugs, according to a court transcript. Scileppi said that a charge of reckless driving remained.

Ultimately, prosecutors agreed to a sentence for Catalano of 6 months in jail and 5 years' probation.

At the Jan. 7, 2009, hearing, Catalano said, "I'm a person with feelings and emotions like you, and I suffer every day. I truly don't think I ever will learn to live with this."

Eleven months later, he was found to have violated his probation by failing to refrain from using illegal drugs and failing to complete a treatment program. The judge sentenced him to 1 1/3 to 4 years in prison, the sentence for criminally negligent homicide, court records show.

Catalano did not respond to requests for comment.

His sentence of 6 months galvanized Nappi. Although she had no political experience, she launched a campaign to toughen the penalties for unlicensed driving. She said she needed to channel her grief.

She saw some success last November, when Angelica's Law took effect. It decreased the number of suspensions or revocations needed before a driver can be charged with felony aggravated unlicensed driving. Previously, 10 suspensions on 10 different dates were needed to upgrade the charge. Now it is five on five dates.

The new law also imposes a fine of $500 to $5,000 and a prison term of up to 2 years upon conviction.

Penalties for unlicensed driving vary widely nationwide, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Florida, a driver with a third offense is subject to 5 years in prison or a $5,000 fine. In North Carolina a third offense can result in a permanent license revocation.

Nappi, now remarried and known as Dawn Riendeau, considers the new law "a Band-Aid solution."

What confounds her and her daughter, who has also become an activist, is that such a small change took 16 years.

Politics of driving

Thiele, who cosponsored Angelica's Law in the state Assembly, said it was "incredibly hard" to pass the new law. He attributed the resistance in the State Legislature to legislators who oppose increasing penalties for any crimes.

One reason for the resistance is the fear that increased penalties would disproportionately affect minority communities, Thiele said.

Research conducted by Scopatz shows that the majority of people driving without valid licenses nationwide are middle-aged white men, he said.

The data on unlicensed driving is not broken down by race in New York, but it is for gender. Of the 9,000 cases of aggravated unlicensed driving brought each year on Long Island, the overwhelming majority of defendants are men, generally in their mid-20s, according to a Newsday analysis of the state's pretrial release data. The Office of Court Administration and the Division of Criminal Justice Services maintain the information.

We are too accepting of some of the stuff that we see on the roadways.

— Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina

Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas

Steve Englebright, a former state assemblyman who is now a Suffolk County legislator, said the divide in the State Legislature boiled down to an urban-suburban split in which many urban legislators believe "the whole system is prejudicial."

"There has been a substantial number of incidents in which the people who were arrested were treated in a manner that was viewed by those local legislators as being too harsh or unfair," he said. "My own belief is that we need stricter laws, not weaker ones, because of the lethality of driving a 5,000-pound machine without accountability into public spaces — roads, parking lots, highways."

McCormick agreed. "What do you say to families who say penalties aren't high enough?" she said. "They are 100% correct. That's my response."

"I would love to get the legislators to sit with me talking with a family because maybe it would open their eyes, but I've actually had some legislators tell me, 'Don't bring victims here. We know already what this is,' " she said.

Paige Carbone, regional executive director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said her organization runs into resistance when trying to advocate for stricter laws. "It's extremely frustrating," she said.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina said he supports toughening the penalties for unlicensed driving.

"I think our roadways should be safer, and if that's going to make the roadway safer, then yes," he said. "Sometimes I think we are too accepting of some of the stuff that we see on the roadways."

Who gets suspended

Suffolk County leads the state with the most instances in recent years in which drivers faced a top charge of aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, according to state data.

In New York, a driver's license can be suspended for a number of reasons, said Daniel B. Friedman, a traffic and criminal defense attorney based in Westbury who sits on the board of the Nassau Legal Aid Society.

The primary reasons include failing to respond to a ticket, a conviction for drugged or drunken driving, accumulating too many tickets, having too many points and not having insurance, he said. A driver's license also can be suspended for failure to pay child support or taxes.

Often, a suspension or revocation is administrative for something like failing to make an insurance payment, he said, and the process for getting a license restored is confusing.

"People have to work. They have to worry about their lives. They have to take care of their bills and their families, and they just assumed that this is not an issue," he said.

Friedman made clear that he "is not defending everyone," but added, "Automatically being suspended doesn't mean you're going to be a bad driver and therefore have an accident."

Because each ticket issued to a driver without a valid license is counted as a suspension, the number can add up.

When Kerri Bedrick drove the wrong way on Sunrise Highway last August, allegedly causing an accident that killed her 9-year-old son, Eli Henrys, she had 56 active license suspensions.

Her first suspension came after a 2012 conviction for driving while intoxicated. She continued driving — and once even got cited for not having the ignition interlock device that was required after her DWI conviction. That is a device installed in a car that requires the driver to blow into it before being able to start the car. If the driver's blood alcohol level exceeds a set level, the car won't start.

Although Bedrick managed to get her license restored twice, she went on to accrue the 56 license suspensions through July. The offense of unlicensed driving can result in jail time, but she didn't get any and continued driving up until the fatal crash.

Bedrick was hardly alone. Court records show that other drivers have been stopped with even more license suspensions:

• Suffolk County and Brookhaven Town officials announced on April 22 the arrest of Joao Abreu, owner of Farmingville-based Chase Construction Enterprises, for alleged illegal dumping in the pine barrens. During the investigation, they also learned he had 27 license suspensions and did not hold a valid commercial driver's license, according to a news release from the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office. Abreu's lawyer, James D'Angelo, told Newsday he is a "hardworking family man."
• Demetris L. Lennon was arrested April 8 and has 73 license suspensions. He told police, "My license is really bad. Put me in handcuffs," according to court records. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
• Suffolk police arrested Janelda Camille in April 2023. They stopped her for speeding near Exit 52 on Sunrise Highway in Patchogue and discovered she had 65 suspensions on 12 different dates. Camille did not respond to a call for comment.
• Oscar Ronquillo was arrested in December 2018 in West Babylon with 56 license suspensions. His lawyer could not be reached for comment.

"Any number of suspensions means somebody should not be driving," DMV spokesman Walter McClure said in an email. "It doesn't matter whether somebody has one or two, or in double digits, they're still not supposed to be driving."

For Suffolk County Chief of Patrol Gerard Hardy, the issue is simple:

"We want people to obey the laws," he said. "We want people to drive safely. We don't want to go to another person's house and knock on the door and tell them that their 18-year-old kid was killed in a motor vehicle crash."

Victims' pain

For McCormick, who said she still communicates with many of the families of victims of vehicular homicide, the drivers — not the system — are the problem.

"Nobody has the right to drive," she said. "It is not a constitutional right. It is not a legislative right. There's no right to drive. If you're driving in New York State, you are doing so as a privilege."

I am terrified for the people of Long Island.

— Maureen McCormick, vehicular crimes prosecutor

Credit: Newsday/Drew Singh

Typically, cases are resolved either through a plea deal or are dropped by prosecutors altogether. Bail is rarely set.

What has struck McCormick, Nappi, Franzone and others who have dealt with vehicular homicides is the sheer randomness of their occurrence.

"Here's the thing about victims," McCormick said. "They didn't choose to be here. The person behind the wheel of the car had all of the choices."

"I am terrified for the people of Long Island in general and in New York State because sometimes you see too much, and it's been a very long time speaking to a very large number of families who could easily be my family," she said.

Riendeau said every time she drives, it feels like a gamble.

"Anybody that buries a child is facing a lifetime sentence," she said. "We live with this every single day. It doesn't end when the casket goes in the ground. It's something that I get up with every day."

With Joshua Solomon and Michael Gormley