A tour of North Fork wineries ended in carnage Saturday, when a hit-and-run drunk driver slammed into a limousine full of young women on Route 48 in Cutchogue, cops said.
Four of the women were killed in the crash, and their four friends and the limo’s driver were seriously injured in the 5:15 p.m. accident.
Local police initially indicated that the victims may have been bridesmaids out on a bachelorette jaunt to area vineyards.
But a family member of one of the surviving women told The Post at Peconic Bay Medical Center that the pals were not part of a wedding party, and were simply good friends who had hired a limo so that they could drink responsibly.
“They had to die instantly,” eyewitness Ted Webb, 76, of Orient, NY, told Newsday of the tragic victims.
“They looked like they were in a state of shock,” Webb said of the surviving victims.
“They weren’t screaming or shouting,” he said. “They’re sitting in the back and they saw what happened directly in front of them.”
The victims’ black Lincoln had just turned onto a median to make a U-turn onto the westbound side of the highway when it was struck broadside by a red pickup truck with so much force that the limo was nearly severed in half.
Cops chased and quickly arrested the man, charging him with driving while intoxicated.
But the victim’s driver may have also borne some responsibility in making the illegal U-turn, a move that likely required the limo to take up two or three lanes, Flatley said.
“It was a dangerous move,” he said of the limo’s U-turn.
First responders pronounced three of the women dead at the scene.
A fourth died at a hospital, Flatley said.
The most seriously injured were taken by helicopter to Stony Brook University Hospital; the remaining injured were rushed by ambulance to Peconic Bay Medical Center and Eastern Long Island Hospital.
Cops did not release their names or information about their conditions Saturday night.
“We don’t even have half of the people identified because they went to three different hospitals. We’re trying to sort out all the details,” Flatley said.
A man who was dating the mother of one of the injured women, whom he identified only as “Alicia” from East Setauket in Suffolk County, told The Post that she and seven of her friends had been out on a wine tour.
The pals had hired a limo so they could drink without fear of being too drunk to drive as they traveled among several vineyards, he said.
Alicia didn’t know about the status of her friends as of Saturday night, he added.
State and local police and crews from seven fire departments were visibly shaken as they attended to the gory crash site.
White sheets covered the bodies of at least two of the women. The pavement around the limo was littered with metal debris. A bagel, a medic’s glove, a cooler and a crushed cell phone lay scattered nearby.
“It was a hectic scene,” Flatley said.