A drunken driver lost control of his S.U.V. on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan on Friday evening and crashed into a crowd of people, killing two men and injuring three others, according to the Police Department.
The driver, Elvin Suarez, was charged on Saturday with manslaughter, assault and driving while intoxicated, the police said. He was taken into custody after the crash happened at 6 p.m. on Friday near Amsterdam Avenue and West 109th Street on the Upper West Side.
The police said Mr. Suarez was driving a black Mercedes-Benz S.U.V. that smashed into two parked cars, crossed a bike lane and landed in a crowd of people, coming to a stop against a parking meter with its front wheels on the sidewalk. The collision with the second car, a van with a 51-year-old man in the driver’s seat, set off a chain reaction involving four more unoccupied parked cars.
Officials identified the victims on Saturday as Jason Negron, 46, and Michael Saint-Hilaire, 35. Mr. Negron lived about a mile south of the crash, while Mr. Saint-Hilaire lived farther away on the Upper East Side, according to the police.
Two other pedestrians, a 36-year-old man and a 44-year-old man, and the driver of the van were hospitalized and in stable condition, the police said.
Mr. Suarez could not be reached for comment on Saturday and a lawyer was not yet listed for him.
Jorgé Santiago and his wife, Eva, were crossing Amsterdam Avenue at 109th Street at the time of the crash. It started two blocks south of them, as they saw the black S.U.V. strike a car at around 107th Street, they said. The vehicle then accelerated north. When it reached 109th Street, it struck a curb that separates the bike lane from the rest of the street. That sent the S.U.V. flying into the air, they said.
It landed near the spot where a group of men from the neighborhood like to socialize and play dominoes, the couple said. The men on the sidewalk were well known to longtime residents in the area, they said.
The S.U.V. “jumped in the air, and when it came down, it smashed on everybody,” said Mr. Santiago, 53, who cried as he described the crash.
A cyclist was in the bike lane at the time of the crash, according to an interview that was posted on X with a woman who witnessed the events and said she was a neighbor. The cyclist was struck and thrown to the sidewalk, she said, where emergency workers tried to perform CPR. After the crash, the woman said, another man was trapped beneath the black S.U.V. None of the details could be independently confirmed on Friday evening.
The police remained on the scene into the night, and sections of Amsterdam and 109th Street were still blocked by police tape at 10 p.m. on Friday.
