When a driver allegedly high on fentanyl smashed into off-duty EMT Ashley Diaz, the 29-year-old mom knew she had to act fast or she would die.
Blood was gushing from her mangled right leg, and the first cop on the scene applied a tourniquet to try to stop the bleeding, but it wasn’t working.
“I was telling him it needs to be high and tight because my leg was in a condition that no one should ever see,” Diaz told The Post of the horrific Sept. 16 crash on Staten Island, when she got hit while standing outside her parked car.
“They didn’t really know how to get it up my leg. So I just told them, ‘Put it up here and tighten it as much as possible.’ They didn’t tighten it enough.”
As Diaz continued to give instructions, she knew that staying conscious was critical. “If I fell asleep, I wasn’t going to make it,” she said.
Diaz lost her leg just above the knee. The collision also knocked out her front teeth and left her with a broken scapula, broken femur, broken collar bone and cuts across her face. When medics arrived, one EMT friend she’d worked with on the job at the FDNY “didn’t know it was me because apparently I was unrecognizable,” Diaz said.
Driver Nicole Marino was “heavily impaired” by the potent opioid fentanyl when she rammed into Diaz, according to a prosecutor with the Staten Island District Attorney’s office.
“If she really was on drugs, driving…” Diaz said and shook her head. Fentanyl, she said, “is everywhere. It’s really bad. It’s the strongest drug.”
31-year-old Marino, who cops say was unlicensed, is now facing 25 years in jail for first-degree felony assault and has been charged with other crimes, including drug possession for allegedly having heroin on her.
She remains locked up at Rikers Island after failing to make bail of $100,000 cash, and a $200,000 bond, according to the Staten Island DA’s office. She’s pleaded not guilty to all the charges, and the case is back in court on Nov. 15.
Diaz’s tragic accident appears to be one more example of how fentanyl has become a serious epidemic in the city, law enforcement sources said.
“As this tragic case has shown us, the impact of fentanyl on our streets reaches beyond those who use it,” said Staten Island DA Michael McMahon.
“And an increased risk of harm for drivers, pedestrians, our first responders and most importantly our children must be addressed by our lawmakers and law enforcement across the state.”
“It’s a serious threat to the public,” added Adam Wandt, a John Jay College professor who’s been studying the drug with the support of a US Department of Justice grant. “We need to approach this as a public health problem because there is a near unlimited supply of this stuff. It’s so cheap and so easy to transport.”
Drug dealers “are now mixing fentanyl in with cocaine and even spraying it on marijuana,” “The biggest threat is from people getting drugs that are laced with fentanyl — and they have no opioid resistance.”
According to the CDC, 2,540 New York state residents died of a synthetic opioid overdose between May of 2021 and May of 2022, the most recent month for which figures are available. That’s up from 354 such deaths in the 12 months prior to May of 2015 — a 617 percent increase during the past seven years and the biggest spike among overdose deaths from every drug, including cocaine, heroin and prescription pills, a Post analysis of the data found. (The CDC considers synthetic opioids to be fentanyl and tramadol, though experts say that virtually all the deaths from these synthetics are caused by fentanyl.)
On the day of the crash, Diaz said she had been shopping for chocolate-covered strawberries for her mom’s birthday and was near her home in the New Dorp section of Staten Island.
“I remember I opened the car door and I just see this car drifting at me. Two seconds and it changed my entire life. It was like a boomerang hitting me and pulling me.”
Diaz said the driver “came up to me” and tried to blame her for the collision.
“She said, ‘Oh, my God. You came out of nowhere.’ I said, ‘No, you came out of nowhere.’ And then I just started screaming for my mom.”
Diaz underwent 11 surgeries and spent two weeks in a medically induced coma before recovering. She was released Sunday from Staten Island University hospital.
Her four-year-old son Eddie pushed her wheelchair when she left the hospital. Before she was released, he told his mom, “I’m gonna break you out of here. You don’t need the doctors to help you, Mommy. I’ll help you.”
Diaz accepts that her career as an EMT is over, but the FDNY “is trying to set me up with an inside position and then I guess I’m going to try to go to nursing school. I’m ready to figure it out.”
Meanwhile, a GoFundMe page has raised more than $130,000 to help pay for her care and recovery, which her father said is needed since not all the costs are covered by insurance.
The money could help buy an advanced prosthetic leg that “goes for about 150 grand,” her dad, Rodin Diaz, said.
“It’s been overwhelming, the support.”
