A Long Island woman who killed an NYPD cop in a drunken hit-and-run on the Long Island Expressway was handed a 20-year prison sentence for manslaughter on Wednesday — following a tearful, heart-wrenching plea for justice from the hero officer’s widow.
Irene Tsakos said in a Queens courtroom packed with New York’s Finest that the senseless 2021 death of her cop husband, Anastasios Tsakos, by drunk driver Jessica Beauvais has left her family ravaged.
“As Jessica Beauvais was sobering up in a police station that morning, our world was collapsing,” she sobbed. “Because of a single person’s despicable actions, our family was sentenced to a lifetime of loss.
“My children don’t understand the permanence of death,” Irene Tsakos added. “They were trying to figure out ways to bring him back somehow. Our son wanted me to get him a big kite so he could fly it high in the sky so his daddy could grab onto it and bring him back. He cried daily ’cause Daddy would never hold him again. He was only 3 years old.