Daniel Gomez was charged with leaving the scene after Erik Ermanovics was killed on Sunrise Highway.

Leaving the scene of a crash that killed someone is its own charge. It is not a murder count, and the police release does not say the crash was an accident. Suffolk County Police set the arraignment for Wednesday at First District Court in Central Islip. The New York Post, publishing at 1:05 p.m. Eastern, still described that hearing as ahead of him and did not report a plea or a bail figure. A date on a release is not a result.

Suffolk County Police said that at 4:25 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026, a man crossing westbound Sunrise Highway at North Indiana Avenue in Lindenhurst was struck by a 2012 Honda Accord and that the driver left in the vehicle. ABC7 New York put the crash at about 4:30 a.m. The pedestrian was taken to Good Samaritan University Hospital in West Islip and pronounced dead. The first police release withheld his name pending notification of next of kin. A later update on the same release identified him as Erik Ermanovics, 56, and described him as undomiciled. ABC7 reported the highway stayed closed in both directions until 1 p.m. between Wellwood Avenue and North Jefferson Avenue. A closed road and a hospital pronouncement are what those accounts reported. They are not a finding about how the Accord was being driven.

Police said Major Case Unit detectives arrested Daniel Gomez, 65, at his Brentwood home and charged him with leaving the scene of a motor vehicle crash involving a fatality. The release said he would be held overnight at the Third Precinct and arraigned on Oct. 7 at First District Court in Central Islip. The New York Post, in a story published at 1:05 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, reported the same charge and wrote that he was set to be arraigned in Central Islip that day. The Post story did not report that he had entered a plea, and it did not report a bail amount. ABC7's morning story also said he would be arraigned Wednesday. A scheduled arraignment is the first court date. It is not a plea, and it is not a sentence.

The Post reported that Gomez faces up to seven years in prison if convicted. The same story wrote that he accidentally struck Ermanovics and then sped away. The police release says Ermanovics was struck by the Accord and that the driver fled. It does not call the crash an accident, and it does not charge murder, manslaughter, or vehicular manslaughter. The count on the release is leaving. Whether the driving was careless, reckless, or something else is not an element that release alleged. A newspaper's word for the impact is not an element of the charge.

ABC7 reported that crime scene investigators spent Tuesday collecting evidence, surveying the highway, and bagging items, and that people nearby described heavy foot traffic along that stretch of Sunrise Highway. Neighborhood comment and a day of scene work are not a reconstruction a court has adopted. As of the Post's Wednesday afternoon account, First District Court had not published a plea in the stories used here. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.