'A living nightmare.’ Grieving loved ones speak about Route 6 crash that killed Rockland woman in Woodbury
The New York State Department of Transportation says it is working on safety improvements on Route 6.
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Samantha Lezin, 26, called her mother after work on May 6 and at the end of the call, said ‘I love you,’ like she always did.
About an hour later, the young woman from New City was killed in a head-on crash on Route 6 in Woodbury.
“It was just a regular day. She was headed to a doctor’s appointment,” says Lezin’s lifelong friend Andreanna Whittaker. “She didn’t come home.”
That reality has become a living nightmare for Lezin’s tight-knit family in Rockland County and her close friends.
“I just keep waking up, expecting things to be different,” says Whittaker.
As News 12 reported shortly after the collision last month, state data shows the young woman is among at least a dozen people killed in crashes on Route 6 in Orange County since 2022. The state police documents obtained by News 12 in a Freedom of Information request show a total of 2,044 motor vehicle crashes within that timeframe and that at least another 92 people were seriously injured in those accidents.
Most of the crashes occurred in Fort Montgomery and Woodbury on a stretch of roadway that's become one of the most dangerous in the state.
“I really can’t believe she’s gone. She was just driving, and someone hit her, and her life was taken. A life that’s cherished by so many people,” Whittaker says.
Lezin was working as a lab technician for a physician in New City. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Hartford and graduated high school from Paramus Catholic in 2016.
The New York State Department of Transportation says it is working on safety improvements on Route 6. The stretch where Lezin was killed is a single lane in both directions, without a barrier dividing oncoming traffic.
Whittaker says those upgrades can’t happen soon enough.
“We wish this didn’t happen to us. We wish Sammy was still here," she says.
