Jurors in Steven Schwally's murder trial in Deer Park nail salon crash expected to begin deliberations Wednesday

The defense and prosecution delivered closings statements Tuesday in the murder trial of Steven Schwally for the deadly Deer Park nail salon crash after the prosecution rested its case Monday evening and the defendant chose not to call any witnesses.  

  Supreme Court Justice Richard Ambro is scheduled to charge the jury on Wednesday morning and jurors are expected to begin deliberations later in the day. 

During closings, a prosecutor told the jury Schwally drank alcohol and cruised around Deer Park for hours before he drove his 2020 Chevrolet Traverse into a crowded nail salon on June 28, 2024, adding that the defendant didn’t seem to care that four people were killed in the crash.

Vehicular Crimes Bureau Chief Carl Borelli dismissed defense claims that Schwally, 66, could not remove his foot from the gas pedal due to a leg disability, and said he knew exactly what he was doing when he barreled into Hawaii Nail & Salon at a high speed.

“The only thing wrong with him was that he had been drinking all day,” Borelli told the jury Tuesday afternoon.

Earlier in the day, Schwally’s attorney, Christopher Cassar, of Huntington, said prosecutors failed to prove Schwally was intoxicated.

Cassar acknowledged that the crash was a “tragedy,” and used surveillance video Suffolk prosecutors have shown repeatedly throughout the trial in an attempt to convince the jury that Schwally was not intoxicated.

But the vehicle’s event data recorder showed that Schwally was able to accelerate and decelerate before the crash, Borelli told the jury in Riverhead. The crash, which left nine people injured, he said, was no accident: Schwally chose to speed across a busy street and through a parking lot crowded with cars and people.

“He put the pedal to the metal and floored it,” Borelli said, adding that the Traverse was moving so fast that it went airborne before it crashed into the salon.

Schwally only applied the brakes after he had crashed into the salon, the prosecutor said, killing owner Jian Chai Chen, 37, of Bayside, Queens; employees Yan Xu, 41, and Mei Zi Zhang, 50, both of Flushing, Queens; and off-duty NYPD Officer Emilia Rennhack, 30, of Deer Park.

“They never even had a chance,” Borelli said of the victims. “They never saw it coming.”

Authorities said Schwally was driving 78 mph right before the crash and that his blood alcohol content was 0.17%, more than double the legal limit.

Ambro’s courtroom was packed with law-enforcement personnel for the closing arguments to support Rennhack's family, including many NYPD officers in uniform.

Schwally, charged with four counts of second-degree murder and other crimes, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He twice rejected Ambro’s plea offer of 22 years to life in prison and faces up to 25 years to life if convicted by the jury. On Monday, the judge dismissed only a single assault charge related to a crash survivor who was not among the roughly 40 witnesses called by prosecutors to testify.

Borelli said Schwally never once asked about the dead and the injured in the salon — even as first responders pulled him out of the wreckage while store employees screamed in terror and cried with pain.

"Did he cause the death of four people? Clearly," Borelli said. "He didn't care."

Cassar told jurors video taken from the Commack Motor Inn showed Schwally driving out of the motel’s parking lot slowly and deliberately. “He drives like an old man,” the attorney said.

Cassar later pointed to video taken at a convenience store where Schwally stopped for cigarettes, and at the liquor store where he bought two containers of Long Island iced tea. Schwally showed no signs of impairment at both stops, Cassar said. 

“He’s not swaying. He’s not holding on to anything,” he said.

Cassar blasted the government for failing to address Schwally’s history of hip problems and other medical issues. “I didn’t have to prove that this was the result of a medical issue,” Cassar told the jury. “They have to prove it. They have the burden.”

Cassar told the jury that the blood-drawing process was tainted and that Schwally was not intoxicated at the time of the crash. Schwally consented to give blood, but authorities did not want to use that sample because the defendant had passed a field-sobriety test, Cassar said. So authorities used blood drawn by the staff at Good Samaritan University Hospital, which the attorney said was contaminated by police officers. 

“They know that and they chose to bring this case anyway," Cassar said, who chose not to call any witnesses.

Schwally suffered a heart attack late last month and has not appeared in Ambro’s courtroom since then. He is not expected to return to court before the jury delivers its verdict.