Police in New York City are searching for the driver of a blue car who they say beat a man to death in an apparent road rage attack on the Belt Parkway in Queens early Sunday. The deadly confrontation unfolded in the overnight hours and left one man dead and another injured before the attacker got away, touching off a manhunt across the borough as detectives worked to track down the vehicle and the person behind the wheel.
According to police, the violence broke out just before 1:30 a.m. off exit 21B of the Belt Parkway. Investigators say it began as a dispute after a crash on the parkway, an ordinary collision between vehicles that escalated with frightening speed into a physical fight between the people involved in the wreck on the roadway in the middle of the night.
During the confrontation, two people were beaten with a baseball bat, according to police. What may have started as an argument over the crash turned into a brutal assault in the dark, with the weapon used against the victims before the driver of the blue car fled the scene and left the two injured men behind on the parkway as the situation spiraled out of control.
One of the victims, a 47-year-old man, suffered head trauma in the beating. He was rushed to the hospital, where he later died of his injuries, turning what had begun as a traffic dispute into a homicide investigation for the NYPD. His identity had not been released as of Sunday morning as police continued to piece together exactly how the encounter turned fatal.
A second man, 39 years old, was also injured in the attack. He was treated at the scene by responding medics for his injuries in the aftermath of the beating, a very different outcome from the older man who was taken to the hospital with head trauma and could not be saved despite the efforts to treat him after the confrontation on the parkway.
As of Sunday morning, police were still searching for the driver of the blue car, who fled after the deadly encounter off exit 21B. No arrests had been announced, and investigators were working to identify and locate the vehicle and its driver, as another Queens roadway became the scene of a fatal burst of violence sparked by a crash and the confrontation that followed it.