Photos from the scene courtesy of Dave Gorton

Mr. Mendoza-Baquiax was taken by ambulance to Stony Brook University Hospital with non-life threatening injuries and was placed under arrest for Felony Driving While Intoxicated, according to police.

The Riverhead Town Volunteer Ambulance Corp, Flanders Volunteer Ambulance Corp, Riverhead Fire Department, Stony Brook Ambulance and Manorville Volunteer Ambulance, responded to the accident. Detectives from the Riverhead Police Department and the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Unit were also on the scene. County Road 105 remained closed until early Thursday morning.

The investigation remains open and anyone who witnessed the accident or has information about the crash is asked to contact the Riverhead Police Department at 631-727-4500. All calls will be kept confidential.

This is a developing story and will be updated as information becomes available.

Those who are named in police reports have not been convicted of any crime or violation. The charges against them may later be reduced or withdrawn, or they may be found innocent.

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The accident occurred when a Ford Escape struck a Suffolk County Transit Bus, causing the bus to strike a utility and crash into the brick building at 303 Griffing Ave., Riverhead police said in a statement.

Two ambulances from the Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps and a Northwell Paramedic unit were first to arrive and treated six patients on the scene, later transporting five to Peconic Bay Medical Center for evaluation, according to a statement released by the ambulance corps.  

Police said the five injured included both drivers and three passengers on the bus, police said.

Connor Morrison, who works nearby, saw the lights in his workplace flicker and walked outside, where he saw the scene and took a photo.

“I went outside and saw the accident,” said Mr. Morrison, who said that the bus appeared to have gone right into the building. “It’s a really narrow street.”

Numerous first responder agencies were dispatched to the site. The Riverhead Police Dept. and Riverhead Fire Dept. responded, as well as the Riverhead Fire Marshall’s office, the volunteer ambulance corps, a Northwell Paramedic Unit and several other area ambulances officials said.

The incident remains under investigation and anyone that may have witnessed the crash is asked to contact the Riverhead Police Dept. at 631-727-4500.

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The investigations uncovered what law enforcement officials described as three distinct drug operations led by a trio of alleged gang members peddling cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and cocaine laced with fentanyl countywide.

One of the three alleged leaders, Paris Parks, is a Greenport resident who authorities say is a Bloods gang member who sold felony weight amounts of cocaine, heroin and fentanyl to undercover police officers in deals ranging from $3,500 to $10,000 per transaction, from February, 2022 to July, 2023.

Mr. Parks’ attorney, Robert Macedonio, said his client has pleaded not guilty, and said in an interview that “obviously these are extremely serious allegations.

“We have received little to no discovery to date. Once I receive all the discovery and documentation on the case, we can do a full evaluation of the charges.”

Among the co-defendants are three Riverhead residents, as well as one defendant each from Shelter Island, Orient and Southold.  

The Southampton Town Police Department, the Southold Town Police Department and the Riverhead Town Police Department participated in the massive multi-agency investigation — which involved the execution of more than 100 search warrants of cell phones, residences, vehicles and other digital data sources, as well as thousands of hours of surveillance.

More than two kilograms of cocaine and a kilogram of fentanyl were seized during the probes, as well as illegal firearms including an assault rifle with a high-capacity ammunition feeding device, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney, whose office headed up the investigations.  

“Along with our law enforcement partners, we undertook a comprehensive investigation into who was dealing deadly drugs in Suffolk County,” Mr. Tierney said in a statement. “We discovered three alleged drug distribution networks and set about to dismantle them.” The statement went on to say that “overdoses in Suffolk County, just like the rest of the United States, are at crisis levels. This is an emergency, and we are treating it as such.”

In the summer of 2021, six North Fork residents suffered fatal overdoses from cocaine laced with fentanyl over the course of three devastating days in August. The oldest was 40, the youngest 27. Several suspects in two separate cases are facing charges for supplying the lethal drugs.

Together, the 30 defendants in the new cases are facing 132 charges, including long-term conspiracies to distribute narcotics, the sale and possession of narcotics, money laundering and illegal firearms possession.

The district attorney said that Riverhead resident Lusbin Antonio Hernandez-Garcia, 34, and his co-defendants ran a “large-scale cocaine trafficking operation,” and that Mr. Hernandez-Garcia “sold primarily in the Riverhead area.”

Over a six-month period, Mr. Hernandez is alleged to have sold narcotics to an undercover police officer on eight occasions, with two of those transactions being “felony weight cocaine,” meaning, in this case, at least two ounces of the drug — which sells by the gram at the street level .

Mr. Hernandez-Garcia faces a top charge of 2^nd degree criminal sale of a controlled substance.

In New York state, A1 felony weight is at least four ounces, while A2 felony weight is at least two ounces. A number of the co-defendants are accused of selling both A1 and A2 felony weight narcotics to undercover officers.

Mr. Parks, one of the alleged ringleaders, is charged with selling A1 felony weight narcotics, including fentanyl and cocaine, on nine different occasions, according to Mr. Tierney.

Edwin Mazariegos-Manchame, 21, of Riverhead is facing a top charge of 2^nd degree criminal sale of controlled substance, while  Nora Manchame-Orellana, 40, of Riverhead, is facing a top charge of 2^nd degree conspiracy, as is Timothy Busso, 26, of Southold. Brian Weslek, 42, of Shelter Island is charged with 5^th degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. Lawyers for only four of the seven North Fork defendants could be identified on Wednesday. Attorneys for Mr. Weslek and Mr. Busso did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Colin Astarita, Mr. Hernandez-Garcia’s attorney, was about to meet with his client’s family and said he would respond as soon as possible.

In addition to the local police departments, Suffolk County police and the district attorney’s office, the investigations involved the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York, the federal Drug Enforcement Adminstration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

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In June, the city filed a lawsuit against Suffolk County, Riverhead and 29 other municipalities for issuing “unlawful emergency executive orders” which were intended to prohibit the city “from arranging for even a small number of asylum seekers to stay … within their jurisdiction,” the lawsuit stated.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Ms. Aguiar said she has not personally been in contact with city officials and doesn’t know why the suit was dropped, but the city has reportedly dropped similar lawsuits against Suffolk County and the other municipalities.

Last month, a State Supreme Court judge in Manhattan ruled that the city would have to fight each of nearly three dozen municipalities in each county or town’s courts, one by one.

In May, Riverhead became the first municipality on Long Island to issue an executive order declaring a “state of emergency” prohibiting local hotel and motel owners from signing deals with the city to temporarily or permanently house asylum seekers. The order has been renewed weekly ever since, and will continue to be renewed, the supervisor said.

“Not only would this be this type of emergency, [a] housing emergency [would] be in violation of our codes. But in addition, it will limit hotel space during our busiest tourist season, thereby threatening the existing local jobs, the economy that our community depends on,” the supervisor said Thursday.

Ms. Aguiar went on to say that “it’s a matter of protecting my town and protecting our own homeless population. We have three [homeless] encampments here that we constantly are working with.” She said the majority of the town’s homeless population are U.S. military veterans.

“We need to take care of the people … who served our country … some of them [have] PTSD, and are ill and need assistance and we need to take care of our homeless.”

Riverhead’s ongoing executive order states that in and around Riverhead there are currently “an estimated 224 overcrowded apartments or over-occupied homes,” as well as, “91 unlawful apartments … 35 unsafe buildings … two large-scale, non-transient homeless shelters … 14 sober homes … and three outdoor homeless encampments.”

Less than two weeks after Riverhead’s initial declaration, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone followed suit and issued a countywide state of emergency. Governor Kathy Hochul also declared a statewide emergency over the vexing and controversial issue.  

The debate over housing migrants bussed to New York City from the southern border has remained largely split along party lines since the spring. The supervisor was flanked at Thursday’s press conference outside Town Hall by the Riverhead’s all-Republican town board, as well as Republican state Assemblywoman Jodi Giglio.

Earlier this month, Long Island Republicans including Representative Nick LaLota and state Sen. Anthony Palumbo demanded that Gov. Kathy Hochul rescind New York’s self-designation as one of 11 “sanctuary states,” the product of an executive order issued by former Mayor Andrew Cuomo in 2017.

New York City’s sanctuary status is based on a 1979 court decision which found that the right to shelter for homeless men is included in the state constitution, citing the article XVII phrase “the aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state and by such of its subdivisions.” The issue arose in a lawsuit against the city filed by the Coalition for the Homeless. The mandate was extended to women and families with children in 1981.

Andrew Leven, a Democratic candidate for Riverhead town board, said he believes the town must be “at the table” to help work through a crisis that will ultimately impact the whole state.

“I think that Riverhead needs to be at the table with various governmental agencies and New York City to sit down and put together a comprehensive plan that funds the placement of migrants in various communities, so that Riverhead can decide whether or not it wants to participate.

“However, today there is no such plan and there is no short term prospect for such a plan being formulated. On that basis I don’t think Riverhead should be accepting undocumented migrants who are bussed to us from other communities.

“Let’s talk” about the issue, Mr. Leven added, “but right now, it’s chaos, and right now we don’t need that.”

Mr. Leven said he disagreed with the use of preemptive actions such as Riverhead’s state of emergency declaration.

“This is too important an issue to deal with hypotheticals,” he said. “My understanding is that is what Riverhead is nevertheless doing. We need to proceed carefully here and it is not at all clear to me that emergency decrees in the absence of actual facts are the way to do that.”

Ms. Aguiar initially said that the original executive order prohibiting the placement of migrants in Riverhead was in reaction to information she learned New York City Police Department sources, as well as a talk radio show hosted by Guardian Angel Curtis Sliwa. The supervisor is a retired NYPD detective sergeant.

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