Last weekend, a group of off-duty police from Linden, New Jersey, and a friend were on their way home from an evening at a strip club. According to reports, the officer driving that car had earlier posted a photo on Instagram showing three shot glasses he captioned, “Jack Daniels Fire on the house.”

That may explain why the man’s car was later caught headed the wrong direction on the West Shore Expressway on Staten Island just before 5:00 a.m. Unfortunately, it’s only too common for intoxicated drivers to become confused and drive against the flow of traffic, and this time it led to tragedy. The car with the off-duty officers and their friend smashed head-on into a tractor-trailer for Snavely’s Mill, a northeastern Pennsylvania flour processor.

Two of the four men in the car were killed. The driver and the fourth passenger were critically injured. The 33-year-old tractor-trailer driver was injured, as well, although an NYPD spokesperson gave no details except to say he had been treated and released.

A blood-alcohol test has been performed on the driver of the car, but the results weren’t in as of this posting. The man’s boss, the Linden Police Chief, said it was premature to speculate on the cause of the accident, adding, “We were all young once and I’m sure we’ve all done stupid things in our life.”

The driver was 27. The passengers were 28, 28 and 23.

There is hardly a greater recipe for disaster than a drunk driver hitting a commercial truck head-on. Now, two men are dead, two others are injured critically, and one whose injuries are unclear. Sadly, they and their families are now left with both emotional and financial issues they may be dealing with for years.

Source: Lancaster Online, “Manheim truck driver injured in wrong-way accident caused by off-duty N.J. cops returning from strip club,” Cindy Stauffer, March 22. 2015