After Police Chase and Fiery Crash, an Agonizing Wait to Learn the Worst

Carmen Colon felt a sense of dread when her stepson did not respond to her texts.

Several days earlier, on April 2, a man in a stolen 2025 Honda CRV had been killed when the car smashed into a building and caught fire in the Inwood section of Manhattan. Two officers who were chasing the car when it crashed were suspended amid a police investigation into their actions.

The driver, burned beyond recognition, was not identified in the immediate aftermath.

The lack of replies to her texts and rumors that she had begun to hear made Ms. Colon, who lives north of New York City in Orange County, N.Y., fear that the driver was her stepson, Francisco Andres Guzman Parra, 31.

On April 4, Ms. Colon, 53, and Mr. Guzman Parra’s oldest sister, Francis, rushed to the precincts connected to the crash: the 50th, in the Bronx, where the two officers worked, and the 34th, in Upper Manhattan, where the crash occurred.

“‘I want to know if that’s my stepson,’” she said she told officers.

They got no answer from the precincts. Early the next day, Ms. Colon called the New York City medical examiner’s office to say that Mr. Guzman Parra’s dental records could be found at a free clinic in Harlem where he had been treated for a toothache.

The next day was Sunday, April 6, She went to church and prayed and then, on Wednesday afternoon, the medical examiner’s office confirmed her fears: Her stepson was the dead driver. Ms. Colon called Mr. Guzman Parra’s mother in the Dominican Republic to tell her.