West Islip man arrested after fatal Robert Moses Causeway crash
State police arrested a West Islip driver after Yusuf Gul, 27, of Bay Shore was fatally struck on the Robert Moses Causeway near Exit RM2. The case is now a criminal impairment investigation.
New York State Police arrested a West Islip man after Yusuf Gul, 27, of Bay Shore was fatally struck on the Robert Moses Causeway southbound near Exit RM2 in the Town of Islip. Troopers responded around 1:38 p.m. June 25 and found Gul visibly dead at the scene, turning a roadside death on a familiar South Shore parkway into a criminal case.
Investigators with the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation identified the driver as Stephen M. Aylward, 63, of West Islip. Police said Aylward was operating a 2012 Jeep when it struck Gul on the shoulder of the causeway. He was arrested and charged with Driving While Ability Impaired and Combined Influence of Drugs or Alcohol and Drugs, an unclassified misdemeanor.
Aylward was scheduled to be arraigned the morning of June 26, and state police said the investigation remained ongoing. Investigator Marcus Rivera was listed as the contact for the case. The charging decision marked a shift from crash response to an allegation that impairment played a role in the fatal strike.
The Robert Moses Causeway is an approximately 8.1-mile controlled-access parkway in Suffolk County that links West Islip to the Fire Island area and Robert Moses State Park. That corridor carries heavy seasonal traffic, especially during beach season, and the park at its southern end draws nearly 3.8 million visitors annually, according to New York State Parks. The roadway is also a working transportation route, with the New York State Department of Transportation recently issuing advisories for lane reductions and bridge inspections on the causeway.
The fatality landed squarely in the middle of that local traffic pattern. Gul lived in Bay Shore, while Aylward lived in West Islip, placing the crash within the daily travel radius of South Shore communities that rely on the causeway for access to the beaches, parkland and barrier-island routes beyond. State police have not said whether Gul had been walking, standing or otherwise on the shoulder before impact, but they did treat the scene as a death investigation and then made an arrest after reconstructing the crash.
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