The Long Island woman who torpedoed into oncoming traffic in a wrong-way crash that killed an elderly couple had hit 70 mph after downing whiskey and Cokes, prosecutors said.
Diana Kutateladze, 36, admitted to drinking the mixed drinks before the head-on crash on the Southern State Parkway on Sunday that killed Bishop Donald Maxwell, 82 and his wife, Liscent Maxwell, 88, according to Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly’s office.
The allegedly boozed up driver sideswiped a car on the parkway, jumped the median and caused a six-care pileup that sent 10 people to the hospital and killed the Maxwells, who were known as leaders in their Christian church community.
“They never missed any Sunday services in all their lives,” said Laura Uhle, a Far Rockaway resident and church-goer who knew the couple.
Uhle said the couple had been together for over 60 years.
The Maxwells had devoted decades to their Far Rockaway congregation, with Donald serving as bishop and general overseer of Pentecostal City Mission Church, with Liscent serving as a reverend alongside him.
The couple, who lived in Westbury, were returning home from a church event when Kutateladze’s Escalade came screaming at them in the wrong direction, according to friends on Facebook.
“Woke this morning to hear you’re not with us Bishop Maxwell and wife,” one parishioner wrote on Facebook. “Gone too soon.”
Kutateladze, who has since been charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, allegedly drunkenly sideswiped a gray BMW in the westbound lanes near exit 17S in Malverne before her Cadillac Escalade spun out, launched over the median and slammed head-on into the Toyota Highlander carrying the Maxwells.
An unnamed third person, who was driving the Maxwells, suffered a broken arm and pelvis, prosecutors said.
Kutateladze’s husband, who was riding in the front passenger seat, was left in critical condition and has since been intubated with a brain bleed and two fractured femurs, prosecutors revealed.
When police arrived, Kutateladze allegedly had glassy eyes and reeked of alcohol, blowing a 0.10 on a preliminary breath test, prosecutors said.
She appeared in a Hempstead courtroom Tuesday in a hospital gown and wheelchair, where she pleaded not guilty to all 10 counts and was remanded without bail.
“There are witnesses to the defendant’s intoxication, and she admitted to it,” Nassau Assistant District Attorney James Taglienti said.
“Also, due to the nature of the crash itself, it shows how reckless her driving was to end up on the wrong side of the parkway and crash head on into another vehicle.”
A Legal Aid attorney noted that Kutateladze — a mother of four, including one-year-old twins — has lived in Oceanside for six years, holds no criminal record and earned her law degree from Cardozo Law School last year.
If convicted, she faces between eight and 25 years in prison.
