Murder so fowl: Long Island driver mows down family of geese

New York Post

17-05-2025

A fowl scene unfolded on a Long Island highway when a heartless driver slammed into a family of geese despite pleas from a good Samaritan to slow down — killing the adults and two of their goslings.
The massacre on Veterans Highway in Islandia left Coleen DeLorenzo in tears.
DeLorenzo, 58, was on her way to work and heading north Thursday morning when she spotted the two adult geese and their six feathery babies crossing the four-lane thoroughfare just before the Long Island Expressway.
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4 The goslings were brought to Sweetbriar Nature Center in Smithtown.
Sweetbriar Nature Center
'Everybody stopped,' the Patchogue resident told The Post. 'These geese were in a very perilous part of the road. . . . I saw them from a mile away.'
She put her hazard lights on and was getting out of the car when she looked over her shoulder and saw a blue van that wasn't slowing down.
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'It was a Disabled American Veterans van, and they were flying,' DeLorenzo said. 'I waved my hands, they never even looked up. They hit the entire family of geese. They obliterated them at 50, 60 miles per hour.'
'This van never even tapped the brake.'
Devastated, DeLorenzo 'started running around trying to save the goslings.
'I picked up one baby that was hit, I thought maybe we could save it,' she said. 'It died in my hands.'
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4 The van which struck the goslings' parents and two siblings 'didn't even tap its brake,' DeLorenzo said.
Sweetbriar Nature Center
A young couple eventually helped her gather four surviving goslings, while workers doing construction nearby stepped in and used their trucks to block traffic.
'I was sobbing, covered in blood. They came over and blocked the traffic and used tarps to cover the bodies and move them, made sure I was ok.'
DeLorenzo and the couple helping her eventually made contact with Sweetbriar Nature Center in Smithtown, which took in the survivors and posted about the incident on social media.
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4 The goslings were brought to Sweetbriar Nature Center in Smithtown.
Sweetbriar Nature Center
Janine Bendicksen, director of wildlife rehabilitation at the center, said the surviving Canada geese are doing fine.
'The thing is, you know when you hit and kill something. You hear it, feel it. And to just keep going?' she said. 'That is the tragedy of it all.'
The center, which posted an emotional video of DeLorenzo pleading with people to slow down, takes in nearly 3,000 animals a year, 'everything from eagles, hawks, owls, foxes, you name it,' she said.
4 Coleen DeLorenzo was on her way to work when she spotted the family of geese, including six goslings, on the side of busy Veterans Highway in Islandia.
Sweetbriar Nature Center
The incident has left DeLorenzo shaken.
'I'm sick over it. It was such a violent act it will never go out of my head,' she said.
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'That any human being could lay their head down and sleep at night after doing what they did — I feel lost.'
Disabled American Veterans, the organization whose name was on the van, could not immediately be reached for comment.