A man was left critically injured early Wednesday after a fiery two-car crash overturned a vehicle and shut down the eastbound Long Island Expressway in Brentwood, according to Suffolk County Police. The other driver, also an adult man, was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, while detectives now work to piece together what caused the wreck.
According to ABC7 New York, the two vehicles collided on the eastbound LIE near Exit 55, and one of them caught fire in the process. PIX11, however, places the crash near Exit 53 in Brentwood, reporting it happened around 2:55 a.m. The two accounts do not agree on the exact location along the highway, and nothing in the available reporting resolves that discrepancy.
The critically injured driver was rushed to South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore, per Suffolk County Police. The second driver was taken to a local hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, the station's report notes.
Eastbound Lanes Shut Down for Hours
The crash prompted the closure of all eastbound lanes of the Long Island Expressway at Exit 53 in Brentwood. Officials said the lane closures were expected to continue into the morning rush hour, leaving commuters to navigate around the shutdown during what is typically one of the busiest travel windows of the day.
Suffolk County Police Third Squad detectives are investigating the cause of the crash, and no further details about how the collision unfolded have been released.
Not the First Crash Near This Stretch
This is not the first serious crash reported near this stretch of the LIE. In June 2025, a Brentwood woman was seriously injured when her car flipped while she was entering the expressway near Exit 53, according to Newsday. Police said Cindy Membreno-Reyes, 35, was driving a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe that went off the road and overturned around 9 a.m. on an entrance ramp between westbound Exit 53 and Express Drive North. She was also taken to South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore with serious injuries, and the entrance ramp was closed for a few hours before reopening.
That earlier incident is part of a broader pattern documented by Newsday, whose investigation found that traffic crashes killed more than 2,100 people on Long Island between 2014 and 2023 and seriously injured more than 16,000 others. The overnight crash closed eastbound lanes of the LIE, with closures expected to continue into the morning rush hour.
