‘A Living Nightmare’: Loved Ones Mourn Samantha Lezin After Fatal Route 6 Crash in Woodbury

‘A Living Nightmare’: Loved Ones Mourn Samantha Lezin After Fatal Route 6 Crash in Woodbury

Woodbury, NY — What began as an ordinary day turned into a devastating tragedy for the family and friends of Samantha Lezin, a 26-year-old woman from New City, Rockland County, who was killed in a head-on collision on Route 6 in Woodbury on May 6.

Just an hour before the crash, Samantha had called her mother after work—ending the call, as always, with a soft and familiar, “I love you.” It would be the last time they spoke.

“She was just going to a doctor’s appointment. It was a regular day,” said Andreanna Whittaker, Samantha’s lifelong friend. “She didn’t come home. I just keep waking up expecting things to be different. It’s a living nightmare.”

The crash has left Samantha’s tight-knit circle of family and friends shattered. Her sudden loss is one felt deeply across Rockland County and beyond. A graduate of Paramus Catholic High School (2016) and the University of Hartford, where she earned a Bachelor of Science, Samantha was working as a lab technician for a physician in New City. She was known for her intelligence, compassion, and the warmth she shared with those around her.

“I really can’t believe she’s gone,” Whittaker said. “She was just driving, and someone hit her, and her life was taken—a life that’s cherished by so many people.”

Samantha’s death is one of at least a dozen fatalities on Route 6 in Orange County since 2022. Data obtained by News 12 through a Freedom of Information request reveals that from 2022 to present, there have been 2,044 motor vehicle crashes along that route, with at least 92 people seriously injured. The majority of these accidents have occurred on the stretch through Fort Montgomery and Woodbury—a corridor now regarded as one of the most dangerous in the state.

The section of Route 6 where Samantha died is especially hazardous: a two-lane road with no physical divider separating oncoming traffic. According to the New York State Department of Transportation, safety upgrades are in progress, but for grieving families, they can’t come soon enough.

“We wish this didn’t happen to us. We wish Sammy was still here,” Whittaker said, her voice heavy with grief.

Samantha Lezin’s life was full of promise, surrounded by love, and tragically cut short. As her family and friends fight to come to terms with the loss, they also hope that her death will be a wake-up call—one that drives real change and makes Route 6 safer for all.